Grand Plan

Tennis star Pete Sampras ended the speculation Tuesday. He will play at least one more season on the tour, his 16th, but will skip the first major of 2003, the Australian Open in Melbourne in mid-January.

“I’ll start in February in San Jose,” he said, “and then go right from there to tournaments in Scottsdale, Indian Wells and Miami.”

He is skipping the Australian because the timing of his decision to keep playing won’t allow him to properly prepare for the tournament. But after he begins in San Jose, he said it will be business as usual. He will play the three remaining Grand Slam events, the French in May, Wimbledon in June and the U.S. Open in September, and schedule other tournaments as his health and inclination dictate.

He said he does not want his 2003 season to be viewed as some sort of farewell tour.

“I’m just going to see how it goes, just kind of ride the wave and see how far it takes me,” he said.

Until he won his 14th Grand Slam event title at the U.S. Open three months ago, the only retirement talk involving the 31-year-old was by the media. Before the Open, he had not won an event, much less a major, since making men’s tennis history with his 13th Grand Slam title in the 2000 Wimbledon, a span of 26 months.

As the losses piled up, most of his postmatch news conferences were dominated by gently worded questions about whether he was near the end.

“The last couple of years were tough,” he said Tuesday. “It took a lot out of me, emotionally, to not play well and to have to talk about it all the time.”

But once he shocked the sports world with his dramatic U.S. Open victory over Andre Agassi in the final, the euphoria of that 14th major title -- two more than any other man -- was such that he agonized about ending his career on that high.

“Of all the majors, that was the sweetest,” he said. “It was just hard to top that. There were many moments when I seriously talked about stopping. Once I won, I felt like I had wiped out two years of criticism in two weeks of tennis.”

He has not played a competitive match since beating Agassi, and that inactivity fueled speculation that he would retire. He used the time to ponder his future at home in Beverly Hills and said his closest advisors were his wife, Bridgette Wilson, the actress who recently gave birth to their first child, son Christian; plus his father, Sam, and his brother, Gus.

“I kept looking for something to tell me, for somebody to give me an answer,” he said. “But there wasn’t one moment, not any one conversation, some quote or even something I heard on TV. Sometime last week, I just decided. The talk of not playing seemed a little scary, and I’ve kept playing enough around here since the Open to know that I still enjoy playing.

“And now that I’ve decided, that I’m announcing it and letting people know, it feels good. I’m relieved. And the goals are the same as they were 10 years ago, to win majors.”

He will make one concession to age. He will go from his old Wilson racket with 85 square inches of hitting surface -- the smallest used by anybody on the men’s tour -- to another one, specially made for him by Wilson, with 90. The usual club player’s racket is 110 square inches.

“I’ve played with the same racket since I was 14,” he said, “and the technology on the old one has about run its course. I need to try something a little upgraded. My arm was getting sore last year.

“I understand that, week in and week out, I don’t have what I had when I was No. 1 in the world (1993-1998). To do that, to stay there, it has to be your total life, you have to live and breathe it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still win the big ones. That’s why I play.”

When it is time for him to retire, there are business interests already in place. The new Carson sports complex, being built by Phil Anschutz and scheduled to be finished this summer, will be home to the Pete Sampras Tennis Academy. And he also has an investment interest in the Tennis Channel, scheduled to debut this spring.

“My name is on it [the tennis academy], and so I’ll be there,” he said. “I’ll play exhibitions and have a presence. That will be more of a focus as I wind down.”

But for now, the only winding down Pete Sampras will be doing will be after more big matches in more big tournaments.

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Down Under

Pete Sampras has decided not to play the Australian Open in January, a Grand Slam event he has won twice. A look at his finishes at the Australian Open:

Year Finish

1989 ... First round

1990... Fourth round

1991... Did not play

1992... Did not play

1993... Semifinals

1994... Winner

1995... Runner-up

1996... Third round

1997... Winner

1998...Quarterfinals

1999... Did not play

2000... Semifinals

2001... Fourth round

2002... Fourth round