Friday, September 06, 2002
Sampras has the look of a champ again
By STEVE WILSTEIN
AP Sports Writer
NEW YORK — Pete Sampras is a washed-up, step-and-a-half-too-slow, one-foot-in-the-grave old codger who just might win the U.S. Open again.
For all the loose locker room talk from losers who never had half his talent, for all the dimwitted suggestions that he should have retired by now, Sampras showed Thursday night that he's not ready to roll over.
If anyone was too slow on this balmy, breezy night it was 20-year-old Andy Roddick, the overhyped, underwhelming “future of American men's tennis.”
At 31, Sampras was quicker to the net, steadier on his serves, crisper in his volleys, and deeper with his groundstrokes. He moved with a sense of ease and purpose while Roddick looked harried and lost and oddly enervated.
Sampras carved out a 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 victory in a neat 1 hour, 30 minutes, playing Roddick like a puppet all the way.
He delivered a message with his first serve — 131 mph down the middle — and though it barely missed, Roddick realized right away just how serious Sampras was about dispelling all that over-the-hill nonsense. Sampras won the first seven points of the match, broke Roddick's serve and held for a 3-0 lead. The rout was on.
Roddick's bruised left foot had been bothering him since Monday, but that's not why Sampras bullied him around the court. To Roddick's credit, he didn't even offer the slightest excuse.
Roddick simply didn't have the game or the strategy to win. He made the mistake of staking out his territory five yards behind the baseline, yielding the net to Sampras and delivering few passing shots or lobs that could thwart him.
Sampras, whose record 13 Grand Slam titles include four at the U.S. Open from the first in 1990 to the last in 1996, should have been saying “thank you” after every game that Roddick stayed back. Sampras makes his living at the net, and Roddick let him live large. If Sampras wasn't drilling volleys and overheads, he was dropping them softly, far out of Roddick's reach.
Roddick, who grew up idolizing Sampras, looked too respectful, too cautious, too stiff. He cracked serves at up to 133 mph, but he never strung a bunch of big serves together. Sampras bunted them back, chipped and charged and sliced his way through Roddick's power, confusing and frustrating the younger player.
Roddick looked mesmerized.
“He is very graceful and fluid when he plays,” Roddick said. “That makes it easy on the eyes to watch.”
Sampras, 20-0 in night matches over the years at the Open, served as hard as ever, hitting one at 132 mph, many others in the high 120s, and some, just for variety, slower but with beguiling angles and spins.
“This is what I play for,” said Sampras, who will meet Sjeng Schalken of the Netherlands in the semifinals on Saturday. “These are the big moments. He's the young up-and-comer that has a great future. I'm pumped up. I kind of feed off the energy of playing at night here.”
There were a few older champions watching — Boris Becker, Ilie Nastase, John McEnroe, Jim Courier — and the sight of Sampras toying with Roddick and sometimes outslugging him had to warm them. It was an exhibition of power and finesse, experience triumphing over youth.
Any chance Roddick might have had evaporated when he double-faulted twice in a row to drop his serve early in the second set. Sampras took the gift and served for a 3-1 lead, delivering the eighth of his 13 aces and a 132-mph service winner before Roddick sailed a lob long.
Never broken, Sampras faced only one break point, and quickly erased that.
Fittingly, Sampras closed out the match with a drop volley that caught Roddick stranded out of position at the baseline. Roddick sprinted in but never had a chance.
It was vintage Sampras, the same style that allowed him to rule these courts for so many years and reach the last two finals. He has been struggling through the worst slump of his career, losing to nobodies in the early rounds, failing to win a title since Wimbledon two years ago, but on this night he was Pistol Pete once more.
Greg Rusedski should have been there, bowing to him. So, too, Yevgeny Kafelnikov.
Rusedski, who is 13 majors behind Sampras, lost to him in the third round and observed, inaccurately and with little grace, that Sampras was a step and a half slower.
Quipped Sampras: “Against him, I don't really need to be a step and a half quicker.”
Kafelnikov had suggested on a couple of occasions that Sampras ought to retire. Not that Sampras sought or needed Kafelnikov's advice. Sampras' reply was that he would retire when he's good and ready.
“I feel like I can still do it,” Sampras said. “If I didn't, I wouldn't be here.”
He's one old geezer no one should doubt.
———
Steve Wilstein is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at swilstein@ap.org
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Sampras has the look of a champ again
