Aging Champion Is a Day Late and 10 Years Short in Final

A Grand Slam tennis tournament is the most unforgiving two weeks in sports.

You have an off day and you go home. When 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus won a Masters championship in 1986, it was an awesome sports moment. If 30-year-old Pete Sampras had won the U.S. Open Sunday, it would have been a greater achievement. It would have been the greatest achievement in Sampras’ wonderful career.

Beating, in order, Pat Rafter, the 1997 and 1998 Open champion; Andre Agassi, the 1994 and 1999 Open champion; and Marat Safin, the 2000 Open champion, should have brought Sampras a moment of supreme emotion, a 14th Grand Slam singles title.

“This is your home, Pete,” someone had yelled from the stands.

But it isn’t. It is home to the man with the young legs and fresh mind. It belongs to whoever can compete most fiercely for two weeks, who can play a semifinal and final on back-to-back days, who can ignore the wind and the heat and look fearlessly across the net at the greatest player we’ve ever seen, shrug and slap passing shots left, right and center until the champion’s shoulders sag, legs tremble, eyes drop.

As a reward for beating three men who had won five Opens, Sampras got to play a nerveless 20-year-old in the final. Lleyton Hewitt pranced into Arthur Ashe Stadium with not enough knowledge to be nervous and too much energy and ability to be beaten.

There were 23,960 people who wanted to will Sampras to his 14th Grand Slam title. When 23,960 people go “oh” every time you miss a shot; when you get a sustained round of cheers before serving to save a break point in the second set, you know what you have. You have an aging champion who has willed himself into another chance at greatness.

After that cheer, in the sixth game of the second set, Sampras hit a forehand 10 feet long. Hewitt was ahead, 5-1, in that set and would go on to a 7-6 (4), 6-1, 6-1 win. It wasn’t a popular victory. Hewitt heard boos when he accepted his trophy. The young Australian made no friends earlier in the tournament when he seemed to accuse an African American linesman of making calls that favored his African American opponent, James Blake.

Blake lost to Hewitt in five sets. Hewitt would beat another American, 19-year-old Andy Roddick, in a five-set quarterfinal that ended in controversy when the chair umpire made a bad overrule on a line call that led to Hewitt breaking Roddick’s serve in the final game of a five-set marathon.

So Hewitt was the villain in Ashe Stadium. Sampras hoped the villain would cooperate, would lose to the man wearing white. “I was hoping,” Sampras said, “that a little bit of destiny would come through for me.”

But in the very first game, after holding serve for 87 consecutive games over five matches, Sampras was clobbered by reality. Hewitt had won the pre-match coin toss and decided to receive serve. It was a statement. It was a rookie playing in his first Grand Slam final saying, “Give me your best shot now.”

After going up, 30-15, Sampras missed a routine volley and was left wide-eyed and unmoving as Hewitt whipped a backhand pass by him. Sampras saved that first break point with a service winner but on the second, brought about by a winning Hewitt volley, Sampras was punished again, this time by a forehand passing shot, a ball struck with authority and ferocity.

“That did not set the tone I’d hoped for,” Sampras said. Even though Sampras, owner of four U.S. Open titles, broke back, Sampras had lost, in a single game, the belief in the invincibility his own serve and volley.

That’s what happens. There’s always some 19- or 20-year-old who doesn’t care about the past, who’s not concerned about letting some old guy win another nostalgic championship.

Sampras seemed almost quaint when he came onto the court in his white shirt, white shorts, white socks, white shoes, no baseball cap, worn either frontward or backward. Hewitt wore black, and changed into a red-orange shirt with a yellow stripe. In his post-match news conference Hewitt still had the cap on backward. A photographer asked Hewitt to take off the hat and Hewitt said, “But I can’t, mate. I haven’t done my hair.”

Somehow, in the confident way Sampras had dismissed Rafter, won a momentous match against Agassi, a match called an instant classic by John McEnroe, and then punished Safin, who, at 20, had embarrassed Sampras in the final of last year’s Open, Sampras had fooled us and maybe fooled himself.

He’d made us, and himself, believe that he could bring a stadium full of people to its feet again, one more time, to stand up and cheer for the classiest winner U.S. tennis has ever produced.

For 14 months, over 18 tournaments, Sampras has failed to win. He had bombed out of his beloved Wimbledon in the round of 16, beaten badly by a 19-year-old, Roger Federer. His summer season on hard courts had showcased a listless Sampras, one who grumbled at line calls, who was dispatched by Agassi in a straight-set clobbering in the final of a tournament at UCLA, who had given no one a hint that he had in him another championship run.

Then, in a single week, Sampras was Sampras. His volleys were killers, his serve a cruelty to the opponent, his confidence was climbing, his errors falling, his fists were pumping, his heart was thumping.

But at the U.S. Open one week and six days isn’t good enough. Sampras spoke barely above a whisper after he had gamely stood with Hewitt and smiled for the cameras.

“I think I’ve proven this week that I can still win Slams,” Sampras said. “There’s no question in my mind. There’s always going to be younger, stronger, quicker players in all sports. As you get older it gets more difficult. But my game is still there.”

Sampras hasn’t proven he can win another Slam, though. He proved that he can play great tennis on some occasions. He proved that there is still desire burning, that he has a champion’s heart. But Sampras can’t make the 19- and 20-year-olds go away.

“I wish I had some of those legs,” Sampras had said on the Ashe court, pointing at Hewitt, who was bouncing around, a new champion who ran circles around the old champion. Sampras can’t get those legs. He will need luck. He will need a better draw. He will need an all-out, season-long workout plan. He will probably need Wimbledon’s forgiving grass.

He can still give us a match for the ages. Giving us a Slam for the ages, as Sampras found, is much tougher.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Pete Sampras’ Grand Slam Finals

*--*

1990 U.S. Open def. Andre Agassi, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2. 1992 U.S. Open lost to Stefan Edberg, 3-6, 6-4, 7-6, 6-2. 1993 Wimbledon def. Jim Courier, 7-6, 7-6, 3-6, 6-3. U.S. Open def. Cedric Pioline, 6-4, 6-4, 6-3. 1994 Australian Open def. Todd Martin, 7-6, 6-4, 6-4. Wimbledon def. Goran Ivanisevic, 7-6, 7-6, 6-0. 1995 Australian Open lost to Andre Agassi, 4-6, 6-1, 7-6, 6-4. Wimbledon def. Boris Becker, 6-7, 6-2, 6-4, 6-2. U.S. Open def. Andre Agassi, 6-4, 6-3, 4-6, 7-5. 1996 U.S. Open def. Michael Chang, 6-1, 6-4, 7-6. 1997 Australian Open def. Carlos Moya, 6-2, 6-3, 6-3. Wimbledon def. Cedric Pioline, 6-4, 6-2, 6-4. 1998 Wimbledon def. Goran Ivanisevic, 6-7, 7-6, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2. 1999 Wimbledon def. Andre Agassi, 6-3, 6-4, 7-5. 2000 Wimbledon def. Patrick Rafter, 6-7, 7-6, 6-4, 6-2. U.S. Open lost to Marat Safin, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. 2001 U.S. Open lost to Lleyton Hewitt, 7-6 (1), 6-1, 6-1.

*--*

*

Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com