The Passion Of Pete

"People don't follow tennis with a tennis player's eye," Fischer says. "They look at persona. They look at dollars. It's not Pete's fault. It's everybody else's."

It's a matter of style. A lot has changed since Sampras won his first pro tournament, in Philadelphia in 1990, an 18-year-old pocketing the $137,250 check and flying home scared that a blazing plane crash would stop him from spending his first real money. Since then Sampras has won $26 million more and earned at least that much from endorsements. But he has always oozed the laid-back ease of a kid raised in the milds of suburban Los Angeles, and his apparent nonchalance is a quality fans and opponents can't quite figure out. During the Australian Open in January, other players complained repeatedly about the balls, the courts, the heat. Sampras expressed displeasure once and thereafter just gave his mocking half smile.

"He doesn't complain about anything," says fellow pro Richey Reneberg. "I'm on the players' council, and a couple of years ago there was all this talk about how there were too many tournaments. I asked Pete how he'd feel if he had more of an off-season. He said, 'I'm happy the way it is now.' That's how it always is with him. You ask, and he says, 'I don't care.' "

Sampras says that a lot. It is his stock response to charges that he is boring, to the reality that every opponent is burning to take him down, to the fact that he has no rival to push him. "I just...I don't care," he says, holding up his hands as if releasing a pigeon. "I really don't."

That is his public face too. When Sampras ambles into his press conference after having beaten Filippini, he wears a dirty gray sweatshirt and pants that seem to have been lifted from a high school gym class in 1977. He looks so relaxed that he might nod off. He answers each question with a few sentences, in a polite monotone, as if he were reciting from a manual: Yes, he is disappointed by the small crowds. Yes, he'd like to win the French. "It's the only thing missing in my career," he says, as if speaking about a lost sock.

Sampras doesn't say how oddly important the Filippini match became, nerve-racking mentor and all. When Fischer, on the East Coast for personal and professional reasons, asked Sampras if he could come to Philly, Sampras finally relented. This isn't the U.S. Open, he figured, I can handle it. But he doesn't tell the press about this, or about the guidelines he laid down: Fischer could give no advice, instruction or criticism unless asked. And, for god's sake, he was not allowed to mention the French. Sampras doesn't reveal that Fischer went into the locker room after the match and that the two had a conversation unlike any they'd had before. "Well, you got through it," Fischer blurted. But then they traded small talk, normal-people talk, with nothing said about greatness, Laver or Paris.

No, the press doesn't know a thing. The next night is the same. And the next and the next. Someone asks Sampras a question, and he shrugs. Someone asks him to sign some posters, and he sits down and scribbles his name over and over—a portrait of monotony. If you took only a quick glance at him, you wouldn't notice that under his hooded eyes Sampras is looking all over the room as he signs, listening to everything being said. You would believe Sampras when someone asks him a question and he looks up, eyes wide, and says, "You're talking to a guy who just doesn't give a damn."

On the day after Sampras beats Rafter in a thrilling three-set final in Philadelphia, 44-year-old Jimmy Connors stands in a country-club ballroom in Naples, Fla. Both his calves are bound in white tape, a bandage is on his right thigh, and his left wrist is wrapped; he looks a wreck. It is the first day of the season-ending championship tournament of the Nuveen Tour, for players 35 and over, and this is the opening press conference. Borg, Andrés Gomez, Guillermo Vilas and Johan Kriek are there too.

Oldsters are tennis's growth industry, and Connors has made it happen: Feeding off the momentum of his run to the semifinals at the 1991 U.S. Open, Connors has carried the senior tour for four years, winning most of the events, filling seats. Every year has produced more tour stops, more interest. The world still can't get enough of Jimbo's flying circus. "It's what this same group of players did in the '70s and earl• '80s," Connors says after the Nuveen press conference. "We made tennis a big business for these young guys today, and we're doing that again."

These young guys today. They are a favorite target for Connors; he doesn't like their high-octane game, their monochromatic personalities, the fact that they're not...well, like him. It all began in 1991, when Connors put on one of the best and hokiest shows in tennis history at Flushing Meadows, raging around the court, pumping his arms, wiggling his butt—opening his chest, he said then, and showing the people his heart. He provided a startling contrast to young U.S. players like Sampras, Chang and Courier, who felt their job description began and ended with "play hard." With soaring TV ratings to boost his case, Connors flayed the younger men mercilessly. No one took a worse beating than Sampras, who, after being upset in the quarterfinals, called the pressure of defending his '90 Open title a "bag of bricks."