For he had won 12 grand-slam titles going into
this match, sharing the all-time record with Roy
Emerson. One more and he would be out on is own. It is a
prodigious thing to take on board, and or long periods of
this strange rain-interrupted day, Sampras wondered if
he was the man to do it. Sampras was fraught. As he
had once felt the right of a championship heavy on
his shoulders, now he felt the weight of history. No
wonder he could not convert ten break-points that he had
earned for himself. In the first set, he dominated:
holding easily and putting his opponent, Pat Rafter, deep
into trouble on his serve. And yet he could not make
the breakthrough. And in the tie-break - well I can
hardly believe it I am keying the words into here -
Sampras lost by serving two successive double faults. I
mean, this is Sampras, this is his serve, this is
Wimbledon, this is the final. Sampras does not do that. But
he did yesterday. Pat Rafter, an opponent with a
vast all-court range and a deep-seated dislike of
losing so much as a point, was going to make Sampras dig
deep into himself. That roar, that air punch: I have
never seen Sampras do that, and it was only a winner in
the second-set tie-break. Sampras does not celebrate,
he gets on with it. It meant so much. He was
fighting for history and for once, fighting his own
nature. He had to step beyond his own vision of himself,
just as he had to after he had won that first
championship. And so he closed out that second-set tie-break to
level the match. The tide had turned. After that, as
the two men played into the gloom, it was going to be
Sampras's day. The screen filled with shots of Sampras
embracing his parents, and the day closed in a fog of
emotion. A great athlete: to defeat all those opponents
and to win those two decisive battles against
himself. We will not see a better champion in anything,
ever.