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Sampras Regains Supremacy

© Joel Hunt

Well, Wimbledon 1998 is over, and what a tournament it was. The end result was though that Pete Sampras has reaffirmed his grass-court supremacy, and has put himself in a position to challenge the greats of all time. In collecting his 5th Wimbledon title in the last 6 years, Sampras has increased his tally of Grand Slams to 11. This is equal to Bjorn Borg, and just 1 behind the man with the most ever Grand Slams, Roy Emerson. Sampras, turning 27 on the 12th of August this year, has ample time left in his career to equal and pass that record, barring a bad dropping off of form or injury.

Goran Ivanisevic made a valiant attempt to wrest the title from Sampras. The Croatian is probably the best men's player yet to have won a grand slam, and has now finished a runner up at Wimbledon on 3 occasions. He lost to Agassi in 1992, and also lost to Sampras in 1994. This year's effort was much better however. In 1994 Sampras beat Ivanisevic in straight sets. This year the world number 1 won a dogfight 6-7 (2-7), 7-6 (11-9), 6-4, 3-6, 6-2. Goran had 2 opportunities in the second set tiebreak to take a 2 sets to 1 lead, facing Sampras second serves. However after he dumped them into the net, and Sampras took the set, he let him back into the match. Goran was distraught to have lost his third grand slam final, but shouldn't be too hard on himself. He'd had a poor year in 1998, slipping out of the top ten. To go down to Sampras in a 5 set final was no disgrace. But he does need to work on his mental strength if he wants to go one step further. His frailty was evident in the semi-final against Richard Kraijecek, the 1996 champion. With 2 match points on serve in the fourth set, Goran lost concentration after thinking he'd served an ace for the match. He blew the set, and went on to finally win 15-13 in the fifth set!

So far none of the younger players have been able to take the next step towards challenging Sampras' Wimbledon domination, but there were some signs. Tim Henman seems to be improving every year at the All-England Club, and as suggested by Sampras could well be a future champion. His semi-final loss to Sampras was a tight encounter, and could have gone either way. Mark Philippoussis was threatening to give Sampras a fight in the quarterfinals, having beaten the seeded Yevgeny Kafelnikov and 1996 semi-finalist Jason Stoltenberg along the way. However, his serve and his nerves failed him at the critical stages, and he fell away in straight sets. He needs to improve his ground-strokes on grass, and his volleying in order to become a legitimate contender here. Particularly I feel he needs to shorten his back-swing on his ground-strokes, since the quick surface often does not allow time for his normal big back-swing. For the moment, Sampras' biggest challengers on grass look to be Ivanisevic and the 1996 winner Richard Kraijecek.

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