Serving some winners
NEWPORT, R.I. -- He was a shy little kid with a big smile, both hands on his racket, patrolling the baseline and hoping for the best. The bests would come. Many of them -- but not before Pete Sampras spurted to 6 feet 3 inches, discarded the fashionable two-handed backhand, and established himself as a marauder who found a fortune and a record stash of major championships at the net.
A virtuoso of serve-and-volley, perhaps the last of that daring but vanishing breed, Sampras -- seven-time Wimbledon champion -- will be back on a grass court tomorrow, once more a winner. But no running necessary. This time, at Newport's venerable Casino, the Californian will be promoted to the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
As a member of the Hall's Class of '07, Sampras is accompanied by the "Barcelona Bumblebee," Spaniard Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, Swede Sven Davidson, and Massachusetts photographer Russ Adams. Their anointing precedes the semifinals of the Hall of Fame Tennis Championships stopover on the ATP Tour.
A 19-year-old in 1990, Sampras became the youngest US Open champ. "I didn't know what I was doing then," he says. "It just happened." That was the start of a string of majors ending at 14 in 2002 as he beat Andre Agassi to secure his fifth US title. Then he walked away, uniquely. No other great had closed a career with a major triumph.
Although Sampras is Wimbledon's all-time main man with his seven titles (feeling Roger Federer's heavy breathing), he confessed a dislike of grass, a bewilderment, "until my coach, Tim Gullikson, showed me the way." Starting with his 1993 victory over Jim Courier, he was denied the championship only three times.
For me, Moscow '95 was his pinnacle. Particularly as the Davis Cup now seems such a remote prize to Americans. Not only was Olympic Stadium jammed for the final by 16,000 loud partisans, but the Russians had installed a quicksand trap especially for Sampras, a turgid clay court, his least favorable footing.
Nevertheless, he took over as a one-man gang. Cramping at the end of a five-set struggle over Andrei Chesnokov, he collapsed after the last point, and was carried to the dressing room. One more point would have been too much. "I couldn't have gone on," he says. But, a surprise starter in doubles, Sampras blended with Todd Martin over Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Andrei Olhovskiy for the go-ahead point, 2-1. Then, spraying the court with aces and forehand winners, he clinched over Kafelnikov a farewell blast to the Cold War. The United States hasn't won since.
Arantxa Sanchez Vicario almost didn't make it into this world. After three children, her mother was thought to be unable to have another. "One day she took the kids on a famous roller coaster, Tibidabo, in Barcelona," Sanchez Vicario recounts. "Who knows? A good shake-up? Whatever, she was soon pregnant with me."
Zipping and dipping like a mini-roller coaster herself, swift little Arantxa made her initial splash as a 17-year-old, stunning Steffi Graf to win the French Open of 1989. She was the greenest to grab that one until 16-year-old Monica Seles the following year. But Sanchez Vicario won again in 1994, the year she overcame Graf in the US Open final, and was No. 1 for a while.
Her nature as sunny as Spain, she led the homeland to the women's world team championship, the Federation Cup, four times and collected four Olympic medals, including the singles silver in 1996. Despite exceptional baselining and retrieving, she was a solid volleyer, adding 67 doubles titles (six doubles and four mixed doubles majors) to 29 singles. Hers is an extraordinary tennis family. Brothers Emilio and Javier played for Spain as top-flight pros, Emilio in 1988 matching little sister's Olympic silver in doubles.
Before Bjorn Borg, there was high-spirited Sven Davidson, the first Swede to seize a major, the French in 1957 over American Herbie Flam after he lost the finals the two previous years to Hall of Famers Tony Trabert and Lew Hoad. Davidson and Ulf Schmidt were the first Swedes to make an impression at Wimbledon, taking the doubles title of 1958.
Davidson's triumphs were registered during the pre-prize-money amateur era when they played strictly for the fun of it, sometimes free room and board, and a chance to represent their countries. Davidson, ranking in the world top 10 six years -- as high as No. 3 in 1957 -- played 12 Davis Cup campaigns, and won the US Indoor title in 1954. Other national championships on this wanderer's résumé are Canada, Greece, India, Germany, Spain, Egypt, the Philippines, and Turkey. Give him a plane ticket and he'd go anywhere.
High times have marked the artistic career of Russ Adams, a stretch of more than a half-century. It continues as he makes his living with cameras, the first photographer embraced by the Hall. First there was a Baby Brownie, clicking away in a 14-year-old's hands. Freelancing for the Worcester Telegram, Adams developed the films in a darkroom his mother built in the kitchen. Now it's the high-tech digital stuff that graces publications across the planet.
Elevation has been a lifetime theme of this good-natured, unassuming, small-town guy out of Spencer.
No doubt the highest he got was about 70,000 feet in the early 1950s. Serving in a B-36 of the US Air Force's Strategic Air Command, he was snapping and snooping on the Soviet Union. Discharged, he went to work for the Boston Herald (the broadsheet version) as a copyboy. Soon he was on sports, winning prizes for catching Ted Williams, Jim Lonborg, Tony DeMarco, Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Bobby Orr, and Johnny Kelley, among others, at their labors.
But tennis? He has made an excellent international reputation, clicking on every continent but Antarctica, where the penguins presumably prefer swimming.
"I'd never seen tennis played before I was sent to Longwood to cover a tournament," he says. "Didn't even know how to keep score."
He caught on quickly. Paris wasn't new the first time Adams did the French Open. He was there for fashion shows at the height of haute couture. He recalls, "Givenchy, Dior, and Coco Chanel liked my work and were helpful to me."
A sideline as a high-steel photographer kept him moving nimbly on the beams and girders of unfinished skyscrapers way above Boston. But apprehending tennis players, such as the incomparable Aussie, Rod Laver, in their acts has given him his greatest satisfaction, resulting in more than 300 magazine covers around the planet.
If one of zillions of shots stands forth, it's Laver hurdling the net on completing his second Grand Slam, winning the US Open of 1969.
Only Adams froze Laver's leap. It was a once-in-a-lifetime shot. Laver, no hot dog, never did it before or after, and has no idea what instinct launched him.
Adams says, "Like everybody else, I was preparing for Rod to shake hands with the loser, Tony Roche. But suddenly, up he went, and" -- with reflexes as sharp as Laver's -- "I got him."
One of Russ's high times, all right, even though only 3 feet.
