by Pete Sampras
There was, however, a personal silver lining. Tim Gullikson, waiting in the wings to take over as my coach, saw how much I struggled against the French lefties. He felt that I stood too far to my right when I was receiving serve, exposing too much of my backhand. He wanted me to stand farther to the left to send the signal that I was looking to touch off a big forehand return. It was a cagey move, because lefties just love attacking a righty’s backhand, especially in the ad court. The results were remarkable; I think I won my next thirty-two matches against left-handers after he passed on that tip.
I shudder to think how different my rivalry with Goran Ivanisevic, another lefty, might have turned out had I not changed my receiving stance.
Just weeks after the debacle of my Davis Cup debut, I began working in earnest with Tim Gullikson. Joe Brandi had been good to have around to organize things and crack the whip. He had worked me hard, getting me out early to run, forcing me to take part in two-on-one drills. And while he knew the fundamentals well, I can’t think of a single thing he taught me that became part of my secret knowledge as a top pro. It would be very different with Tim.
It took just a few days for my relationship with Tim to jell. It usually takes time to break the ice with me, but Tim got the job done quickly because he was such a social, good-natured guy. We had separate rooms at hotels, but it was more like I had a college roommate. Tim always wanted us to hang out in my room or his. One time I wanted to get a little time by myself, so when Tim followed me back to my room, I tried to give him a hint. I said, “Tim, I have to make a phone call, it’s kind of private.”
“No problem,” he said.
I retreated to my room, and Tim stopped to talk for a moment with the concierge (we were staying in one of those fancy hotels where we had a concierge of our own, right on the floor). Tim was talking with the lady, and when I poked my head out of my room two hours later, he was still talking with her—he hadn’t even left the floor.
When we first went to Australia together, in 1992, Tim would come to my room every night and we would order room service, talk, watch television. I guess he liked the company because he had a twin brother and was accustomed to having him around all the time—even when they played on the tour. And Tim was a family man. His wife, Rosemary, was acknowledged as one of the nicest of spouses on a tour on which even the girlfriends and wives could be competitive. He was really in his element when there were a lot of people around.
Tim was curious about everything in a way I wasn’t, and had opinions about everything in a way that I didn’t. The way he expressed his feeling so freely seemed unusual to me; it was good for me to see that you could do that. But even though Tim was opinionated, he was open-minded and decent—he would give you the shirt off his back. From the very beginning of our relationship, he was full of questions—questions about my tennis, my life, my family. I didn’t realize it until later, but he was opening and loosening me up. From the start, it was me—the insecure, unsophisticated kid—who needed his “space.”
A relationship with a coach is a tricky thing to manage, especially for a young player. When you hire a coach, you’re to some degree hiring a new best friend—someone in whom you choose to invest your trust. But I was always wary of getting too involved emotionally. I’m naturally aware of boundaries, and always thought you played by certain rules—mutual respect being the chief one, and not unloading all your problems on someone else being another. At times, my way must have been hard for Tim (and later, Paul Annacone), because a coach is supposed to be a confidant, and usually wants to be your confidant.
Tim and I sometimes had a little tug-of-war going—he would probe and pry, and I would resist revealing how I really felt or what I thought. That even happened in tennis terms. I was trying to figure out my game, yet I was reluctant to reveal my concerns, even to a coach. In fact, I confessed weakness and confided in a coach that way only once in my career, and it was much later (as you’ll learn). I never wanted to come across as vulnerable or insecure about my tennis—not even to my coach, no matter how much I was struggling. I always had my guard up about that, even as Tim became a close friend and something of a big-brother figure. Maybe I was too cautious, too closed off. Coaching me demanded a lot of reading between the lines, and Tim, like almost all great coaches, was good at that. I’ve been told that artists are often very reluctant to discuss their own work, as if the magic would somehow go out of the process if they did. I can understand that, even though I wasn’t making art. And if my reticence asked Tim to read between the lines, my stoic nature probably made some parts of his life easier. It wasn’t like we didn’t talk about tennis—we talked a lot about tennis, and we watched the game and played a lot. What we didn’t do was obsess about my tennis, and I never used Tim as a therapist.
By nature I’m not emotionally needy, so I tended not to take many people deeply into my life. That kept them from having undue influence or controlling me—and saved me having to rebel against their control, something that happens pretty often in coaching relationships. I was more self-reliant than that. I wanted help with and support for my game on an as-needed basis, and beyond that I always kept a healthy emotional distance. I internalized my emotions, even when it was just Tim and me working out or preparing for a tournament. I gave Tim his space, too, instead of demanding that everything be all about me all the time. It’s got to be exhausting, always dealing with a needy player.
The best coaches out there develop tricks for getting their jobs done, and some of the ploys are strategies you might use on a kid. For example, a common technique for getting a great player to make some change in his game is to plant the idea in a conversation, and then manipulate the discussion in a way that allows the player to take ownership of the idea—like it was his, not yours. It seems transparent, but it works. Tim never had to resort to that kind of stuff with me, but he did need to know what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. That part is critical, probably for any coach, because top players aren’t like journeymen, willing to do anything to get better. They already have great games and great pride. Often sensitivity is part of the package.
Over the next year or two, I would come to know all of Tim’s war stories—how he and his twin, Tom, had made the big time starting from the least likely of tennis outposts, Onalaska, Wisconsin. They taught the game for a while in clubs in the Midwest, raising seed money for their crack at the tour. I knew all of Tim’s big matches as a pro by heart, I swear. I could practically recite point by point Tim’s biggest win, his upset of John McEnroe, on Wimbledon’s famous Graveyard Court (Number 2). If we were out to dinner with other people, I could bust his chops and make him squirm by feigning ignorance and innocently asking him about matches that he knew darned well he had told me about a few hundred times before. Then I would sit back and grin.
But Tim wasn’t blowing his own horn with all that tennis chatter—he was a real student of the game, that rare combination of a guy who played at a high level (he won three tour singles titles and fifteen in doubles, and was ranked as high as number fifteen in singles), but also loved it with the purity and the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a fan.
When it came to the x’s and o’s, one of the first things Tim did was get me to shorten my practice sessions. This was something Tim learned from Jimmy Connors, who may have practiced less—in terms of minutes spent—than any other top player. Jimmy was legendary for his short, intense practices. He sometimes practiced for as few as forty-five minutes, but always with total focus and purpose. He ran for every ball, hit his best shots, and kept up the pressure all the way. He could wear out a guy accustomed to two-hour practices in less than half that time. With Jimmy, you didn’t play two points and then stop, drink some Gatorade, and chitchat.
Tim made a few technical adjustments to my game. Some of them were simple, but critical—like his theory that I ought to overplay to protect my backhand in order to make opponents think I was looking to hit the big forehand. That made many of them try to squeeze
the ball into a very small backhand window. It seems so simple, but just moving over a few feet when you return can make a huge difference in how your opponent is going to approach and play points—if you have the return to back it up.
That tactic seemed to work throughout my career, especially in matches against Andre; he maybe pressed a little on his first serve, cutting it too fine as he tried to sneak it to my backhand, or to blow it by the forehand down the T in the ad court. That left me looking at more second serves, which were then easier to take with the forehand. The strategy also worked against Michael Chang big time, because Michael’s serve was relatively weak and easy to attack with a big forehand return.
At the start of our relationship, Tim thought I was getting a little “handsy”—inclined to use my hands loosely to compensate for a lack of technical discipline. In other words, I was a little lazy. Hands and wrists play a role in almost all of your shots, but they shouldn’t be doing work intended for your arms, feet, and torso when it comes to hitting a firm, penetrating shot. It’s especially tempting for players with good touch to get handsy, and they always pay a price in the way of less weight and penetration on their shots.
Tim firmed up my backhand volley and slice, or underspin, shot. He had me shorten up my backhand slice motion to get a little more weight behind the shot even if it meant less spin—à la Ken Rosewall, whose famous slice was surprisingly firm and heavy. Soon my backhand produced fewer “floaters.” It penetrated better and went through the court more quickly. That made it harder to attack.
On the backhand volley, we focused on getting my entire body down lower to meet the ball. Dropping the racket head always robs a shot of pace; it’s one of those things handsy people do. But the firmest volleys are hit more decisively, with more weight behind the racket. That calls for a little positioning, which is a little more work, but it paid off. These tunings all helped, and shortening up my backswings on all my returns was of critical importance in my transformation into a good grass-court player.
But the biggest area of concern for Tim was my attitude on court. I tended to slump and slouch, especially when things weren’t going my way. Anyone can play great tennis when he’s firing on all cylinders. The challenge is to play well enough to win when you’re not at your best. There’s a sneering inner judge in all of us, and a big part of being successful is tuning him out. And sometimes you have to fight through the indifference and fatigue you sometimes feel, even at big events. Instead of listening to that judge when he says you’re lousy, or should pack it in because you’re tired and there’s always next week—that’s when you need to suck it up and act like a man—hang on, fight on, show the pride of a champion.
Tim understood that I wasn’t fully evolved as a competitor. I was a little soft. He kept telling me never to worry about what happened on the last point, or the one before. He wanted me to intimidate opponents with my bearing as well as my game, and it drove him nuts when I slouched. But I’m a lanky guy, with pretty wide shoulders, so the slouch was deceptive. People described my “hangdog” look a million times in print, but there was a big difference between “young hangdog” and “old hangdog.” Early in my career, I slouched and wore a grim expression that advertised my discouragement. Later, the grim look denoted absolute focus, and the slouch hinted of a gathering storm. Some people even suggested that I was a sandbagger—looking one way but playing another.
As a blue-collar-type guy, Tim was all about the work, all about wringing every bit of potential out of my game. That’s what he and his twin brother, Tom, had done to make it on the pro tour. Tim tried to turn me into a rough-and-tumble, confident, take-it-as-it-comes guy. It was a tough task, and the results were definitely mixed, because in the end I was built differently from Tim, and a leopard doesn’t change its spots.
The Davis Cup debacle was still fresh in my mind in early 1992, and as an old-school, Davis Cup–loving kind of guy, Tim put priority on helping wipe the bitter taste of that Lyon final out of my mouth. As it turned out, the opportunity came up the following January, shortly after the Australian Open. (After an exhausting 1991, I chose to work with Tim instead of making the trip to Melbourne.) In the first round of the ’92 competition, the United States had been drawn to play Argentina, and we were the hosts. The USTA decided to play in Hawaii on hard courts, knowing that the location would appeal to our top players, who were likely to be traveling homeward after going deep in the draw in Australia.
The tie worked out exactly as planned—and hoped—for me. Tom Gorman was very upbeat and he really wanted me to do well. We still had all those team meetings, but I didn’t mind them as much the second time around. I played the first rubber, and, after losing the first set, I played with authority and confidence to beat Martin Jaite. My teammates did their share and we swept, 3–0. That put us in the March quarterfinal against what was then still Czechoslovakia. By luck, we again had the home-court advantage. The USTA decided to hold the tie at Sonesta Sanibel Resort in Fort Myers, Florida.
I was returning to the place where I’d made my debut as a Davis Cup hitting partner in 1989—on a team that featured Andre Agassi and Michael Chang, playing against Paraguay. On that occasion, the $2,500 Dan Goldie and I got as hitting partners was a welcome paycheck. Now I was back at Sanibel and sharing the singles duties with Andre. I was starting to take more pride in Davis Cup, and I was certainly more comfortable with the nature of the challenge. In fact, I began to invest a lot of emotion in it.
Andre was a big Davis Cup guy, but the team still belonged to the ultimate U.S. Davis Cup warrior, John McEnroe. He was winding down his career and mostly playing doubles, but he was still the glue that held the squad together. Todd Martin, who would become a good friend over the years, was a hitting partner on that 1992 squad. During one practice before the tie, McEnroe finished a point, looked at Todd sitting on the sideline, and barked, “Towel.” Not “Towel, please” or “Can you get me a towel?” Just, “Towel.” I happened to make eye contact with Todd at that moment, and saw that he was surprised by McEnroe’s gruff manner. He took a towel and sort of halfheartedly threw it toward John.
I suppressed my urge to laugh, because I understood exactly what Todd was thinking: Who the hell do you think you are? But, being a lowly hitting partner, he could say nothing. We talked about the little incident that night, and I knew that Todd was pissed. To this day, when I see Todd in a hallway or a locker room, I glance at him, wink, and bark, “Towel.” And he knows exactly what I’m talking about.
I split my singles matches in Fort Myers; I beat Karel Novacek but lost to Petr Korda. Andre emerged the hero, pulling our 3–2 win by taking the fifth and decisive match over Novacek.
My tournament results early in 1992 were so-so; Tim and I were just getting rolling. I would go deep in one event and struggle in another, and failed to win a title until late April. But then I had perhaps my most consistent season on European clay, reaching the semifinals in Nice and the quarters at the Italian and French Open.
The next stop was the Wimbledon tune-up at London’s Queen’s Club, where I lost to Brad Gilbert for the second time that year. At Wimbledon, I lost to Goran Ivanisevic in the semis, still hating the grass all the way. The tennis was lightning fast; the balls were hard and they flew like bullets. Goran served me off the court, but that wasn’t just because of his superior firepower—it was partly because I was a flawed competitor.
I got down on myself in that match, which is very easy to do on grass when the other guy is firing aces left and right, and you see your chances of breaking serve degenerating from slim to none with each passing bomb. Grass demands more patience and a higher threshold for frustration than any other surface. Although I was happy to reach the semis, the experience harkened back in some ways to my loss to Jim in the previous U.S. Open. I didn’t really dig deep enough into myself against Goran. No one had to tell me that. I’m not even sure anyone noticed. I knew.
I left Wimbledon looking forward to my comfort zone, the U
.S. hard-court season. First, though, I won a big clay-court event in Kitzbühel, Austria, beating some very solid players (including Alberto Mancini, who at the time was one of the three or four best players on red dirt). It’s probably my second-best win on clay. I was in good shape for the Olympic Games in Barcelona, where I had a good run, given the slow red clay surface. I lost in the third round to the Russian clay expert Andrei Cherkasov, 6–3 in the fifth.
My game seemed to be coming together again and, returning to the States, I went on a rampage. I won Cincinnati and Indianapolis back-to-back, with wins over Edberg, Lendl, Becker, and Courier. I rolled into New York riding a wave of confidence. I felt no pressure at all, like I had the previous year. I was comfortable being, on any given day, one of the top three players in the world. I carried a winning streak of ten matches that I improved to twelve with no trouble in the first two rounds at Flushing Meadows.
In the third round, I had an epic battle with my pal Todd Martin. I outlasted him, 6–4 in the fifth, and then beat an old nemesis, Guy Forget. In the quarterfinals, Alexander Volkov of Russia played like he had a plane to catch. I’m not sure anyone ever packed it in as quickly or obviously as he did, even though this was a Grand Slam quarterfinal. I’d like to think it was because he saw no chance against me, but I know better. Some of these guys are like finely tuned race cars; they’re fast, but prone to spinning off the track without warning the moment they lose a little confidence or face a challenge that makes them uncomfortable.
