Tennis: Sampras gunning for blood on the grass

PETE SAMPRAS calls it the heart of his year. From the clay at Stade Roland Garros and the French championship, where he has never won in nine attempts, to the end of Wimbledon where the command of his craft is most often at its zenith, he chases his dreams across Europe, balancing the books in a mind that shapes points on court in terms of unanswerable explosions. This year, heading into Wimbledon on Monday, his record is played four won two, and all the threads are waiting to be picked up by the world's No 1 player, 6ft 1in son of parents who find themselves too nervous to watch him play at close quarters.

Inspiration is unlikely to desert him at Wimbledon, a championship he has won four times in the past five years and which he describes as "2pm first day. 2pm last day," the times which any defending champion and future finalist will have earmarked. Last year, before the final, he left the waiting room at the Royal Box end of Centre Court to savour the atmosphere before he played Cedric Pioline. He felt even more part of the tradition for doing so. "Wimbledon is coming home," he says.

Half an hour in the company of this undemonstrative and relaxed athlete could convince you that there is no tiger in his soul, no fury to come through the racket hand, but you would be utterly wrong. Admittedly there are few clues that he is a tennis player except for the large lump on the thumb of his racket hand, shaped by a million serves or so, two million forehands, and the rest of the armoury which makes up the player described by the Association of Tennis Professionals at the start of the decade as "continuing to show flashes of brilliance."

Since Sampras unseated the defending champion, Mats Wilander, at midnight at Flushing Meadow in the US Open in 1989, the flashes have merged and Wimbledon finds him holding 10 Grand Slam titles, one fewer than Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver, two behind Roy Emerson, the leader in this field of excellence. Yet against that, Sampras has had a patchy year, beaten by players who had no apparent right to do so, stopped in the quarter-finals in Australia by Karol Kucera, halted in the French in the second round by the 97th-ranked player Ramon Delgado.

Sampras says: "I put a lot of emphasis on the French this year. I do every year, and it was a big let-down. But it is over, I learned from it, and I only need to find a way to win on clay whether it is hot and dry or cold and wet. I am one of the 127 players who did not win in France and fortunately there is always next week and we have this huge event coming up here at Wimbledon.

"If I go through this year without winning a major so be it. I don't want to put any more pressure on myself and I will be going out with the same preparation and the same attitude as in previous years - let's give it a good shot.

"There are a lot of things I want to achieve. I want to give myself a lot of help on the No 1 ranking this year, and then there is the Grand Slam record, that will keep me playing at an unbelievably high level.

"This year has not been great but this is the time when you have to come through, I can't think of a better time to recapture my year. Ten years of playing does take its toll, travelling as much as I do, but you have to forget the past."

Sampras has a miserly approach to losing sets at Wimbledon. In 1993 he lost just four on the way to his first title, only one was surrendered the following year, six in 1995 and three last year when Pioline, the runner-up, was left saying: "When you play Pete he does not give you air, you cannot play against him because he is serving big and returning good, and it is so difficult."

Sampras won that final in 94 minutes, serving 17 aces out of 119 for the championship. His serve was broken twice in 24 sets, and Sampras admitted: "It is the best I have ever served in my career."

At 26, Sampras faces his 10th Wimbledon believing he knows who he should fear. "All the big serve-volleyers can worry you, Richard Krajicek, Pat Rafter, Tim Henman, Greg Rusedski. When you are going with a serve like Greg has, add in the crowd and their support, and he is a definite threat. He has improved his return game, as he had to, because if you are going to win you cannot just serve.

"I love Henman's game, it is classical, and on top of that he believes in himself a little bit more. He has a country's weight on his shoulders but I like what he is all about. Greg is a lefty slasher, Tim has the power, no question, but it is not that easy winning Grand Slams."

Sampras has rarely made promises or threats about Wimbledon where his serve, the best second serve, the best forehand, the best overhead in the game, and an ice cold approach to the business of winning have paid rich dividends. At the same time he has been labelled boring because he can dominate matches so completely that there is no contest. Yet given the chance and the gifts, all champions would take the Sampras route, to meet the task, control, and then subdue. "You are thinking about taking your opponent's heart out and squeezing it until all the blood comes out, even the very last drop, and you have won," he says.