For Pete’s Sake, Maybe This Will Be Sampras’ Year

Pete Sampras arrives at the French Open every year with a smile that inevitably, often quickly, turns to a tortured sneer.

He can’t win, and he can’t stay away. Like Sisyphus pushing a boulder uphill over and over through eternity, Sampras seems condemned to trudge helplessly on the red clay of Roland Garros until his playing days end.

The best player on the planet on hard courts and grass, he is reduced to an ordinary mortal on clay. He charges the net, and balls whiz by him. He stays back, and balls drop teasingly in front of him. His feet get tangled and his head spins.

When the French Open starts Monday, Sampras will arrive for the 10th time. He’s lost in the first round once, the second round three times, the third round once, and the quarterfinals three times. His best showing: the semis in 1996.

He knows all too well that a French Open victory would give him a career Grand Slam, and elevate him beyond dispute above all players in history. It was history he sought last year when he drove his body to the brink in quest of an unprecedented sixth straight No. 1 title.

History is all that’s left for Sampras, and he began this year saying that the one thing he wants in the game more than anything else is a triumph in the French. Not a sixth Wimbledon. Not a fifth U.S. Open. Not a seventh No. 1 ranking. And certainly not a third Australian Open, a tournament he skipped in January to recharge his batteries.

Yet when it came time to tune up for the French at the Italian Open, where the clay is just as red and beguiling, Sampras found himself frustrated as ever. He lost in the second round to Brazilian Fernando Meligeni and admitted he still didn’t know how to adjust to the softer, slower surface.

So, Sampras went off to practice on clay on his own, and he showed up in Duesseldorf, Germany, to try his stuff at the World Team Cup. When he won a couple of matches, he was smiling and sounding optimistic again.

“I’ve learned a lot in the last weeks and months, especially that you only play good when you play a lot,” Sampras said of his self-enforced vacation. “It was good for my private life, less so for my tennis. But I was beginning to feel like a robot that, without thinking, kept hitting a tennis ball.”

Maybe this will be the year for Sampras at the French. Though probably not. He comes in seeded No. 2 to top-ranked Yevgeny Kafelnikov, who won the French in 1996 and the Australian that Sampras skipped.

But the main threat to Sampras doesn’t come from Kafelnikov or the other high seeds, like defending champion Carlos Moya or 1997 champ Gustavo Kuerten. It comes from the dozens of decent clay court players scattered throughout the 128-man draw. Any of them could beat Sampras on this surface, and leave him to trudge away unhappily as he does every year.

And when Sampras goes, so goes much of the intrigue of the tournament for the men. At that point, attention will shift to the women, where the glamour is in the game these days.

Will this be the Grand Slam where Venus or Serena Williams will break through? Where Monica Seles or Steffi Graf will make a comeback?

Martina Hingis is back at No. 1 and eager to complete her own career Grand Slam. The runner-up in 1997 and a semifinalist last year, Hingis has the style and disposition to win the French almost any year.

No. 2 Lindsay Davenport will also be looking for her first French title--she’s never gotten past the semifinals--and No. 3 Seles will going for her third. Seles made a stirring run last year, when she reached the final shortly after her father’s death.

A victory by any of them will probably upstage the men once more.