For Pete’s Sake, Calm Down, Andy

Andy Roddick is trying to take the night. But Pete Sampras owns it.

Roddick is 20 and wants to be the future of American tennis. Sampras is 31 and doesn’t think he’s ready to be America’s tennis past.

Roddick climbs up on a box and high-fives the front-row fans after he hits a winning shot. In the second set. Of a four-set match. He cups his hand to his ear and screams so loud that the veins in his face are bulging, “I can’t ... hear you!” and the crowd bellows its response.

Sampras piles up sopping shirts and leaves wet spots on the court when he falls. That’s not rain, people, it’s sweat flying from his hair as he shakes his head.

There is an occasional fist pump and, after these ever-more surprising wins, a nod of appreciation to the crowds who now stand in his support, trying to push Sampras forward with their energy.

It is real emotion that Sampras offers and elicits. And tonight, when Sampras plays Roddick in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open, there is no question who will be the favorite. Sampras needs the help, he admits it. “The crowds have been great and it makes a difference,” he says.

The drama of Sampras’ quest for a 14th Grand Slam title is not rehearsed, not an affectation.

Late in his career, after being criticized for so long as emotionless and altogether too perfect a tennis player, Sampras has been embraced for his flaws and his willingness to fail.

Meanwhile Roddick has galloped onto the Open show courts with his hair spiked up with gel and a foot-stomping temper tantrum after nearly every close call.

It is as if Roddick has watched too much blast-from-the-past tennis tape over the rain-delayed weekend, when every Jimmy Connors U.S. Open highlight was rebroadcast.

There’s Jimmy making believe he’s shooting pistols into the air. There’s Jimmy calling a chair umpire an “abortion.” There’s Jimmy pointing his fingers at the crowd and yelling “You, you, you, you,” at the end of every match.

Connors may have been the consummate tennis actor, a man who carefully groomed his act by trial and error, but he earned the right to whip a crowd into a frenzy. Even if his frenzy-inciting antics were clearly scripted, even if Connors knew that no chair umpire would dare punish him for screaming obscenely, Connors was still a champion and deserving of adulation when he was 39 and an Open semifinalist.

Roddick is overdoing it with the antics too, but without the Connors accomplishments.

After a dramatic rally Tuesday night with Juan Ignacio Chela, one in which Roddick seemed out of the point on three occasions and which he saved with running, lunging punches of the ball and scrambles to swat a drop shot, he won the unlikely point. Then Roddick nearly leaped into the stands to feel the love.

This would not have been so extraordinary had Roddick not already had to call for the trainer to massage his back. And then to manipulate his foot.

Roddick was even asked if he had planned his foray into the public. “I planned to hit a between-the-leg shot, run down a ball, run into the crowd. That was all in the works from the beginning,” Roddick said. Then he smiled. It was a Hollywood smile, half a smirk, half a grin and all showman.

And it has become common for Roddick to bring trainers onto the court at points when he is behind. Frustrated opponents are whispering that Roddick manipulates alleged injuries into timeouts to discombobulate the other guy.

Sampras has never needed the adulation of the public or such Machiavellian machinations. Sampras plays. He wins. Or he loses. He will not be bullied by age or time or even his own diminishing skills.

He will not decree that tonight’s match will crown a new American best. “Accumulation of years will do that,” Sampras says. “We know Andy is the future.”

And soon Sampras will be the past. A year ago, on Wednesday night, the final Wednesday of the Open, Sampras and Andre Agassi played a classic match, a match filled with drama and excruciating emotions and more well-played points of all kinds, than we’ve seen in all the other Grand Slam matches since. Sampras won in four tiebreak sets even though Agassi had the better summer.

Now another big night. “I love the night,” Roddick says. Roddick loves the noise, the crazier fans, the big television audience, the very theater of tennis under a moon. Sampras loves the night too. Because the weather is cooler, because his legs don’t get heavy so fast, because the soaking wet shirts don’t pile up quite so quickly.

Sampras and Roddick have played twice. Roddick has won twice. Brash has beaten class twice. But never here, never at a Slam, never when the crowd will be so much against him and so much for the real theater created by a real champion.

If Roddick wins, he can take the night from Sampras and earn real respect. He won’t have to drive the crowd to frenzied approval. They will come along with him.

*Diane Pucin can be reached at

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

U.S. Open

*--* TODAY’S MEN’S QUARTERFINALS

*--*

* Andy Roddick (11) vs.

* Pete Sampras (17)

* Fernando Gonzalez (28) vs.

* Sjeng Schalken(24)

*--* FRIDAY’S WOMEN’S SEMIFINALS

*--*

* Lindsay Davenport (4) vs.

* Serena Williams (1)

* Amelie Mauresmo (10) vs.

* Venus Williams (2)

*--* SATURDAY’S MEN’S SEMIFINALS

*--*

* Lleyton Hewitt (1) vs.

* Andre Agassi (6)