*!89366489
*
by Pete Bodo
Mornin', everyone, I hope y'all had a chance to listen to our latest podcast, and by all means keep your questions coming via email (send them to podcast@tennis.com); I think we'll answering a batch of mail tomorrow, or Friday, in a new segment.
If you read and ruminated over the comments from Pete Sampras in sunny San Jose yesterday, declaring his interest to help develop good young players from the U.S., you might have asked yourself two closely related questions: What does a great former champion do with the rest of his life, and what does tennis do with a great former champion? Those questions have special relevance because they can make this whole issue of a champion's role in advancing the blood lines of greatness a sticky one.
Let's start with this. Pete is at a challenging juncture in his career. He's had time to decompress form the demands of career (and nobody, but nobody, ever gave more of himself over to the pursuit of greatness than he) and strengthen his bonds with his family. He also, by virtue of who he is and was, had no clear plan B for his life after tennis. Nobody ever expected Pete to dive into commentary, a la John McEnroe, fling himself into philanthropy in the manner of Andre Agassi, or go all entrepreneur like Jim Courier.
And since around the time Pete developed his Big Dog friendship with Roger Federer, it's been pretty clear that he's experienced a certain measure of buyer's remorse when it comes to hanging up the rackets. Like so many great as well as pedestrian veterans, after an appropriate interval Pete realized that it was still kind of fun to hit a tennis ball, agreeable to hear the applause of the crowd, stimulating to step up to the service notch, stare down the court at an opponent, and reach down deep (or, in Pete's case, not very far at all) for the smokin' ace down the T.
But playing exhibitions and making appearances isn't a suitable steady diet, and it doesn't take up enough of the proverbial day to be a long-term solution to the afterlife. I always felt that Pete Sampras is like the Joe DiMaggio of tennis; he ought to be selective in what he undertakes or endorses, and look to long-term and serious, two-way relationships with partners in the business or sports community. A player with Pete's image and disposition could do a lot worse than be, say, a long-term representative for an outfit like American Express, a car company, or major consulting firm. I'm not sure Pete was interested in making that kind of commitment and what the hail - it's his life, right?
Right now, I think Pete is still trying to figure it out, which is why he - as well as the USTA and Patrick McEnroe, head of the federation's player development program - should tread carefully. The last thing either of them needs is some unrealistic or half-baked association that ends in tears, or just peters out after the novelty of the relationship has worn off. Which is why Pete needs to ask himself if, in the event that the USTA met his obviously high market value (which I don't think is going to happen), he's really ready to put on the humility hat and become an Indian, rather than a chief. Because that's what the PD program needs - Indians, not chiefs. And that's why the only high-status player who's shown signs of fitting in nicely with the USTA program has been Tracy Austin.
The player development program has a pretty well-defined philosophy under director of tennis Jose Higueras, who reports directly to McEnroe. Higueras has directors for each division of the game: Jay Berger for the men, Ola Malmqvist is in charge of the women's game. This brain trust has come up with an approach that draws heavily on certain European methods and philosophies - let's remember that Higueras was one of the first Top 10 tennis players produced in the Open era by Spain (although he married an American girl and lives in Palm Springs), and he's a former coach of Roger Federer. But that philosophy also incorporates the traditional value U.S. coaches and players have placed on attacking, and making the most of power.
As McEnroe takes pains to point out, "Our philosophy isn't one-size fits all. It's flexible. And we don't take a tennis-factory approach. We try to work with any promising player to develop his or her style."
An endless stream of coaches and former players have volubly offered their services, but it's almost always been on their terms. When someone like Jimmy Connors, or Pete, steps forward to say he thinks he can help, certain alarms go off in the heads of the men and women in the developmental trenches. Very few, if any, of these potential fixers has anything more than some vague ideas of what needs to be done, and it's almost always based on a fairly narrow body of personal experience. Sure, there are times when an amateur or generalist knows more than the pro, and shows a talent for cutting to cut to the chase. This matter of bringing along a champion just isn't one of them.
If it were, there would be a host of players out there who got great because they had relationships Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, Ivan Lendl, or Ilie Nastase. Not photo ops, and feel-good, brief, locker room conversations but relationships.
Development guys know the intentions of these former champs are good, but they also know these guys are stubborn, confident and sometimes imperious. The hardest thing of all to instill in a young player is a champion's determination, dedication and game-day temperament - those are the least "teachable" elements in tennis. They're also the ones any coach would just love to be able to drain off of Connors or John McEnroe, and implant in his protege. But nobody has ever succeeded in that yet.
So the question is, just how exactly can guy like Sampras help develop a champion? Giving him good advice, on any aspect of the game, doesn't really cut it, and how much do you pay a great player for those pearls of wisdom? The most obvious answer to the question is, by taking a youngster and becoming his mentor and daily game-and-mentality shaper. But no great champion has ever been willing to do that, if you discount the effort some have made with their own offspring.
Robert Lansdorp is a great coach who just can't submerge his own convictions and methods (many of which run counter to the reigning USTA philosophy) to become a useful, significant component of the USTA. He thinks he has some solutions. He says he's willing to share those solutions. But he, too, wants to do it at a steep price that demands a leap of faith that could be called irresponsible. The sad truth is that instead of sitting down with the people in charge at the USTA, most of the high-value names approach a potential relationship as a negotiation.
Lansdorp also believes that the surest way to develop a champion is through a one-on-one relationship with someone who is coach, manager, adviser, best friend (or parent). McEnroe knows that's a proven way, but he doesn't believe it's the only way. It certainly wasn't the ticket for a host of top players. And while many ambitious parents and coaches have delusions about the USTA's willingness to just write big checks and pass them out to anyone who seems worthy - another leap of faith - that just isn't how the present system works.
"Our overall goal is to fit in the most productive way with an individual's needs and skills," McEnroe says. "If that means having a kid work and train at our center in Boca, entirely supervised by USTA coaches, fine. If it means allowing a kid to stay with the coach who developed his game, that's fine, too. We'll still try to find a way to help that kid. But we don;t just open the checkbook because someone wants to finance a kid's development."
If Sampras is serious about helping the USTA develop the next great American champ, the first thing he needs to do is sit down - like Tracy Austin did - with the USTA coaches and see if they have enough common ground. Sampras' vision of the game, we know, is very different from the game we see being played today. And it's probably a different game than the USTA coaches are promoting.
The last thing the USTA needs is for a former champion to drop in on a periodic basis and tell prospects things that might run contrary to what the kid is hearing on a daily basis from his coaches. So anyone who wants to help the development effort must enter into a relationship with the USTA, although there's certainly nothing wrong with a great player periodically sharing his thoughts with USTA coaches or players. But how much gain does that really yield, and how do you put a price on it?
Austin decided after discussions with the USTA that she could operate within the framework designed by McEnroe and his top aides, and she's a valuable, regular, enthusiastic component in the USTA operations in Carson. She gets paid, but on a scale that doesn't cause resentment with less famous coaches who spend their days feeding balls to talented kids. She's one of the few great players who's been willing to be part of a developmental team, rather than the anointed savior of American tennis. And she didn't come coyly promising to fix the game, as some have, with ideas and strategies he or she is unwilling to lay out.
I don't know if following that path Austin took suits Sampras' needs and desires, although part of me thinks it would be a great fit for him. In this, I think Pete's celebrity and wealth, or at least his market value, is a real impediment to further discussion. It's too bad, but it's a familiar story.