TENNIS
The Best of Pete Sampras’ Three…
… Career titles on a clay court was won at the Italian Open
While Stefan Edberg was the world’s most dominant player that year, 1990 was also the breakthrough season for Pete Sampras. Besides winning the maiden Grand Slam title of his career, at the US Open, the American took home a total of four trophies and won 51 of the 68 singles matches he played. However, just one of those matches happened to be on a clay court.
Sampras managed to win only a single game in his opening round match against Sweden’s Jonas Svensson, at the BMW Open in Munich (Germany). In 1991, the American featured in only six matches on the red clay courts in Europe, and ended up with a 3–3 record. That being said, one of those wins was against Thomas Muster, in the opening round at Roland Garros.
The Austrian went on to make a significant impact on the clay courts in the years that followed, and was referred to as the King of Clay, he could never beat the American on the slow surface. Sampras’ come-from-behind five-set win in the first round of the 1991 French Open was the only instance of the two greats playing each other on clay.
In 1992, keeping the Summer Olympics in Barcelona (to be played on clay) in mind, Sampras deviated from the norm by not only playing in…
