“Do It For Your Coach”: When Pete Sampras Broke Down On Court

Pete Sampras’ coach Tim Gullikson was diagnosed with brain cancer the previous year. Pete trying to bolster him to stay afloat and not give into the disease was trying to win as many matches and do well. Whenever he did well Tim’s spirit seemed to lift.

Even as No. 1 in the world and possessed of an overpowering tennis game, Sampras has been teetering on an emotional edge during this tournament, which he won last year. He stood still on center court at the Australian Open as if naked, his emotions exposed, his face awash with tears, his chest heaving.

“C’mon, honey, get in there,” his girlfriend, Delaina Mulcahy, said gently from the front row.

Across the net, Jim Courier shouted jokingly to his friend and rival, “Are you all right, Pete? We can do this tomorrow.” It was a gesture of love by Courier, who knew how much Sampras was hurting inside and wanted to help him stop crying.

Yet, Sampras couldn’t stop thinking about his coach, who had left the hospital and flown home earlier in the day after a dizzy spell that may have been related to a heart condition and two recent strokes.

“Do it for your coach,” a fan had called to Sampras at the start of the fifth set of a four-hour match Tuesday night that was as much grand theater as it was great tennis between the defending champion, Sampras, and the 1992 and ’93 champion, Courier.

The match was a Titanic struggle, the first time Sampras and Courier had ever gone to five sets, and only two days after Sampras had come back from two sets to love against Magnus Larsson. The game ended after 3 hours and 58 minutes at 1:09 this morning, and the score was 6-7 (7-4), 6-7 (7-3), 6-3, 6-4, 6-3.

“Talent, like steel, must go through fire to be tempered. Emotional journeys are the same. The human spirit must be tested by trials and tragedy before it, too, emerges stronger.”