Serve & Volley

The sting of his semifinal loss at the Australian Open has pretty much faded, and the hip injury that came out of that dramatic loss to Andre Agassi is healing.

Things should be good for Pete Sampras.

He is the No. 3 tennis player in the world and has won more Grand Slam singles titles than everybody except Roy Emerson, with whom he shares the record of 12. He is home in Beverly Hills these days, rehabilitating his hip and hoping to start playing again in a week or so. He has his sights set on an early March return in a tournament in Scottsdale, Ariz., and is rounding up sponsors and players for his first Pete Sampras Classic golf tournament March 6, to benefit the Tim and Tom Gullikson Foundation, a cause dear to him.

Things should be good for Pete Sampras.

But they are not.

Sampras is upset and offended by statements made by Davis Cup captain JohnMcEnroe and said Friday that his integrity has been challenged. Two months from now, April 7-9, the United States will play a Davis Cup match in his hometown, a quarterfinal against the Czech Republic at the Great Western Forum. Yet, he said he is in the dark about his status with McEnroe.

“No, he hasn’t called,” Sampras said Friday. “I want to play. I rearranged my schedule at the start of the year so I could play Davis Cup all year, but I’m a little disappointed, to put it lightly, at some of John’s comments.”

Sampras was set to go to Zimbabwe to join Agassi as the U.S. singles players for the first-round Davis Cup match Feb. 4-6. McEnroe, named the new Davis Cup captain amid great fanfare during the U.S. Open in New York in September, had everybody in U.S. tennis reinvigorated about the Davis Cup, after a series of embarrassing results and no-shows by the top U.S. players in recent years.

But the day after Sampras had lost to Agassi, he called a news conference in Melbourne to say that an MRI exam had revealed a 30% tear in a right hip muscle, suffered early in the first set of the five-set match. And that would knock him out of the Zimbabwe trip.

McEnroe’s quoted reaction was that “Sampras hadn’t ever really wanted to make the trip, anyway.” Sampras took that to mean that McEnroe thought he was faking the injury.

“I felt right then that it became an integrity question, not only when I spoke to him, but in public,” Sampras said, adding that when he’d called McEnroe before the news conference to tell him of the injury, McEnroe responded with “not a whole lot of support.”

“I guess I can understand him being upset,” Sampras said. “He had just heard that Todd [Martin] was out with illness, but I know that I sure wasn’t feeling that good when I got off the phone.”

Sampras said that the integrity issue was the biggest thing for him.

“I have always lived my life with integrity, on and off the court,” he said. “I was really hurt by it. I feel like I’m a straightforward, stand-up person. To hear that, it was pretty tough, especially with the next Davis Cup match here in L.A., something that I’m really excited about.”

Even though they were thousands of miles apart, the Sampras-McEnroe situation grew more tense during the matches in Zimbabwe. At one point, McEnroe pointed out that players such as Jim Courier and Martin had sent the U.S. team messages or had called, but they hadn’t heard from Sampras. And after Chris Woodruff won his dramatic four-set match to salvage the victory over Zimbabwe, McEnroe said that he “might just keep this team intact.”

Sampras took that as a slap.

“John was in a position to put the speculation to bed,” he said. “But instead, he opened the door for the cynics.

“That really bothered me. I was already dealing with a tough loss [to Agassi], and then you add this on top of that. It was just not a great time.

“It hurt me.”

Sampras said that he watched on TV and rooted for the U.S. team, and called Woodruff when he got home to congratulate him.

“The guys there know I am supporting them,” he said. “I couldn’t wait to call Chris, to tell him what a great job he did under all that pressure.”

Nor does he think his current rift with McEnroe is irreparable.

“I want to play, I want to play in the next one here in L.A.,” he said. “What we have in this U.S. team is unique. I’m looking forward to being a teammate of Andre and Alex [O’Brien], and maybe Todd if he heals up. You won’t see a team like this in the U.S. for a number of years.”

McEnroe had addressed the situation Thursday in a wide-ranging conference call with reporters that was held mainly to promote some senior events McEnroe is playing in.

When asked about his apparent implication that Sampras wasn’t injured, McEnroe said, “That’s the implication. It depends the way people interpret it. If Pete Sampras says he’s injured, it’s not going to do me any good to say he’s lying. . . . At the end of the day, the issues that I have with Pete or Pete has with me need to be worked out between us and talked about.”

Sampras was shown the transcript of McEnroe’s statements before he made his comments Friday. Attempts to reach McEnroe on Friday through USTA officials were unsuccessful.

In the meantime, Sampras waits and wonders about his Davis Cup fate and goes about his business. He said that the Gullikson event, held in memory of his former coach, Tim Gullikson, who died of brain cancer, was special “because Tim affected my life,” and he said that his injury had allowed him more time to work on sponsorship and players for the North Ranch Country Club outing.

He also said that he expected to be able to play in the first event in the new Indian Wells Garden stadium March 12-19, as well as the next big event in Key Biscayne, Fla.

Right after that, of course, will be the Davis Cup, the first weekend in April.

“I want to play,” Sampras said. “I just don’t know. I guess there could be better communication.”