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Continued from previous page
Twice a loser in Wimbledon finals, Ivanisevic came out firing.
Drilling ace after ace and pounding Sampras's unusually shaky
serve with his backhand, he took the first set, barely lost the
second, then sagged. Sampras took control until, midway in the
fourth, Ivanisevic again pumped up the volume, breaking him with
four brilliant running passes. Sampras all but panicked. "In the
fifth set, there were these thoughts: Oh, my god, if I lose, how
am I going to feel? How am I going to get ready for the U.S.
Open?" Sampras said. "I have an unbelievable fear of losing.
That's what gets me going."
Then Ivanisevic stopped. Sampras, up 3-2, broke him easily in
the sixth game, held and expected to serve out the match.
Instead, Sampras broke him at love and, before he knew it, had
won his fifth Wimbledon and 11th Grand Slam title 6-7, 7-6, 6-4,
3-6, 6-2.
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After jumping to an early lead over Novotna,
Venus Williams unraveled in a fit of whining and tears.
(Bob Martin)
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Afterward, Sampras sat at courtside, his face in his towel, and
when he looked up, it hit him that he was now standing in
history next to Borg and Laver, men he had worshiped as a kid.
Nothing seemed right. He still felt bad for his opponent, still
wanted to serve it out. In his press conference, Sampras kept
getting asked about history, about being one Grand Slam win away
from tying Roy Emerson's men's record of 12. The questions made
him squirm.
"I felt melancholy about everything," Sampras said later. "I
felt overwhelmed: I've won this thing five times. I never
thought Borg's record would be broken. I'd hear: Borg's five
Wimbledons, and it was just huge to me. You never think of
yourself doing it. As a kid, I was told I was great, but I never
planned on this. It just happened.
"I don't want to talk about me; I just want the respect. I don't
need to walk into a restaurant saying, 'Oh, I'm the greatest
tennis player ever.' It's ironic, but I'm uncomfortable with
what I do, in a way, and with what I achieve."
Sampras has always known that winning majors is about more than
attacking an open court with clever angles. It's about how a
player fills the other spaces in the game—the rain delays, the
time at lesser tournaments, the emptiness after a loss. Novotna
learned this the hard way, but the collapse against Graf and a
series of personal trials (last year, two days before Wimbledon,
her father, Frank, had his foot mangled in a gardening accident
that cost him a toe and months of rehabilitation) pushed her to
lighten up. Once convinced that getting to No. 1 required an
all-consuming intensity, Novotna went to "just being happy on
the court," said Davenport, a former doubles partner. "If we
were losing, I was always like, 'This is terrible,'" Davenport
says. "And she was like, 'Look on the bright side. We're still
in the match.' She really did change."
It's a good lesson for tennis's latest prodigies. In her
quarterfinal with Novotna, Venus Williams stood one service
point from going up 5-2 in the first set before squandering the
chance in a flurry of blown forehands and petulant complaints.
She lost in straight sets. Against Novotna, Hingis raced to a
3-0 lead before flinging her racket into the net and losing
their semifinal 6-4, 6-4. Since winning the Australian Open,
Hingis has lost in the semis of two Slams, and she looks
vulnerable. "To maintain her level at Number 1, she needs to
make another step up—improve herself or come in more or
something," Novotna said. "She has to do that. Because we will
be all over her."
Of Hingis, whom she demolished in the semifinals,
Novotna said, "She needs to make another step up."
(Bob Martin)
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The most dispiriting display last week may have been put on by
16-year-old Serena Williams, who showed great ease on the grass
before retiring with an injury from a third-round match against
Virginia Ruano-Pascual while trailing 7-5, 4-1. Williams had
fallen in the match and called for a trainer, but—never showing
any sign of a limp—she served out and won her last game and
played mixed doubles the next day. In fact, she and her partner,
Max Mirnyi, went on to win the mixed doubles title. For any
player this was a poor showing. For half of a duo who regularly
claim they will be battling it out for No. 1, it was
particularly weak.
"The Williams sisters, they don't know what it takes now to be
Number 1 or win a Grand Slam," said Mandlikova, a four-time
Grand Slam winner. "Maybe in three years they will know, and
they'll look back and say, Wow, I was stupid when I said, 'This
time I'm going to win Wimbledon.' They don't know how hard it
is. They're young. They're arrogant. It's a respect they don't
have, and it's not good."
Who would know better? Since 1993, Mandlikova has been watching
Novotna "grow stronger and stronger and stronger," taking that
loss to Graf and building on it, never giving in to what the
world thought of her. "It comes down to this: You have to depend
on yourself, you have to know who you are, how good you are,"
Novotna said. "I don't let those things bother me anymore."
Instead, Novotna pressed on, saving the match of her life for
this Wimbledon, for Hingis. When the time came, Novotna played
flawlessly in their semifinal, stinging Hingis with touch
volleys, unwieldy ground strokes and a plan that never let
Hingis breathe. When the cheering began to die, she walked to
the net and told Hingis she'd paid her back for last year's
final. Later, Novotna was told that Hingis had said something
nice. "For the first time, I heard it from a Number 1 player:
'Jana is a great champion,'" Novotna said. Her face went pink in
the retelling.
But before all that, there was one other order of business. It
came just after Hingis slapped the final point into the net.
Novotna turned to her box, where she saw Mandlikova, who lost in
two Wimbledon finals because she "wanted it too much," and Betty
Stove, who lost her one final here. Novotna knelt on one knee
and laid her right hand flat on the court. She was going to the
final, and this time she was going to win it. Novotna bowed her
head. Thank you, she said to the kind grass. Thank you for being
good to me.
Issue date: July 13, 1998
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