Twilight of their careers

Past champions have right to continue despite waning skills

NEW YORK -- You find the craziest things combing through tennis' annals. Glance at the 1989 French Open results and the names of Michael Chang and Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario are in the CHAMPIONS column. A year later, Monica Seles is listed as the women's winner. Later in the summer of 1990, it appears that Pete Sampras won the U.S. Open.

The historical record was somewhat surprising given all the recent talk. The four aforementioned players, while no longer at the pinnacle of their profession, are still on the tennis caravan in search of an oasis. With each successive loss, the hand-wringing gets more intense, the whispers ever so slightly louder. They're tarnishing their legacies. They're demeaning themselves as past champions. When Sánchez-Vicario fell in straight sets Monday to little-known Marion Bartoli , one half-expected tournament officials to ask for the 1994 winner's trophy back before letting her reenter the locker room.

In every other line of work, we retire as early as we possibly can. Or as late as we possibly can. Or when the impulse suddenly hits. Regardless, it is our decision. No one lords it over us that we may have passed our occupational prime. No one drops not-so-subtle hints that we're shadows of our former selves, or, as the case may be, selves of our former shadows.

In sports, however, the chattering class has somehow appropriated the right to tell an athlete when to say when. All sorts of ink was -- indeed, is -- spilled debating the merits of Michael Jordan 's comeback. Was it Cal Ripken 's heart or his ego that necessitated his staying in uniform past his glory years? Is Mario Lemieux a heroic cancer survivor or another hubristic athlete addicted to the spotlight?

In tennis it's even worse. There are no teammates to absorb blame, no designated hitter to give a respite to old knees, no transition from starter to role player. It's you out there alone, exposed for the world to see, joined by no one on the right-hand side of the won-loss ledger. So perhaps it is not surprising that retirement talk abounds at Flushing Meadows. Chang and Sánchez-Vicario were asked about it Monday. Sampras, tired of defending his right to earn a living, stated last week that he will reassess his career at the end of next year -- but rest assured that an early loss here and the pointed questions will continue. Andre Agassi may be going strong, but, hey, he is 32 with a wife and kid. Seles gets peppered all the time about taking the gold watch and hanging up her Yonexes. Yevgeny Kafelnikov , the fourth seed, launched a preemptive strike, claiming that if Russia wins the Davis Cup, he will exit stage left. "And maybe even if not," he added.

If our telling athletes when to say when isn't presumptuous enough, it's particularly absurd in tennis. Players past their primes aren't taking roster spots. They're not saddling a team with salary-cap issues. They're not disrupting team chemistry. Tennis is brutally neutral: Win and your ranking improves. Lose and it falls. If Player X can still make draw cutoffs despite the need to gum his energy bars and drink Gatorade from a sippy cup, he'll play on. If Player X can't cut it, the numbers will winnow him out.

That's what happened to Chang, whose ranking slipped into triple digits this year. Unable to make main draws, he swallowed a load of pride and played Challenger events. He scavenged for points and now he's back on the radar. "It's been a difficult road this year," Chang said Monday after beating Francisco Clavet , who, incidentally turns 34 in October. "But still, I look at each day as a new opportunity." (And here we thought he had a retiring personality.)

It is fair to ask why former champions accustomed to winning chose to endure losing week in, week out. Sure, there is the cynical response of money. But, frankly, show me a tennis champion and I will show you a millionaire for life. Love of the spotlight? If most players never signed another autograph or endured another photo shoot again, it would be too soon. Fear of life after tennis? It was Oscar Wilde who said, "Good artists exist in what they make, and consequently are positively uninteresting in who they are." At some level, this applies to tennis players. The sport isn't merely what they do; in many cases, it defines them.

Perhaps the best answer is that just because they're no longer the players they once were, it doesn't mean the clock is up. If a former champion still enjoys competing and relishes the rhythms of life on tour, who cares if he or she is unlikely to win the U.S. Open? What's more, former champions, by necessity, made wholesale sacrifices ascending the summit. On the ride down, they can enjoy the ride, smelling the roses in the courtside flower boxes, as it were. Consider Sampras, who is far more a crowd favorite these days than he was when he won with tidal consistency.

And on the occasion they can outwit time, the rewards can be immense. Eleven years ago Jimmy Connors , then 39, captivated us by reaching the semis here, an achievement that defines his career every bit as much as his Grand Slam titles. If Sampras or Seles or Chang or any of the other rumored pensioners could catch lightning in a bottle, it would be, instantly, the story of the tournament. "All of us would love to be able to go out on a high note," said Chang, "I think that's any professional athlete's dream. We're definitely toward the twilight of our careers, but we want to give it one last good run."

Really. Who are we to try and discourage them?

Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim is covering the U.S. Open for CNNSI.com. Check back each evening to read his daily reports, and click here to send a question to his Tennis Mailbag.

 

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