A Champion's Mind: Lessons from a Life in Tennis Book

After reading Andre Agassi's autobiography, I felt the need to looking into the autobiography for his long-time rival Pete Sampras. While I enjoyed the book, I was a little disappointed by the fact that the book really is an overview of his professional life.

With all fairness to Sampras, the subtitle (Lessons from a Life in Tennis) should have made it clear that he was going to be focusing mostly on his time on the courts. I just would have liked to know more about him as a person and those around him.

Overall, he does a really nice job of describing the events in his professional life. He starts by introducing how he got started in the support and introduces his parents and siblings. After this initial chapter, they fade into the background, only getting rare mentions in later chapters. He then brings the reader through his whole career.

Sampras provides some details of important matches or series, though not nearly to the same level as Agassi did in his later autobiography. There is some interesting insight on some of his coaches and how they helped (and sometimes hurt) his game. Sampras is even surprisingly personal when it comes to one of his coaches, who lost a real tough fight to cancer.

One thing that Sampras does that Agassi didn't do in his book was to really examine the game in terms of what worked for him and what didn't. In some ways Agassi had touched on that, particularly in regard to how his personal life affected his game. Sampras seems to have been able to really separate the game from his life. It was a job, and he went in, did a good job, and moved on.

While he is looking back on his life, he draws on a careful examination of the game to highlight why he was so successful on and off the court. Many times, his success on the courts is reflective of his similar success off them.

When looking to his own game and the performances of those against whom he played, Sampras examines the pros and cons. In the book, he is as critical and praising of himself as he is of others. He also has no trouble in praising the games of people like Edberg and Federer for their games. He also repeatedly refers to Agassi as forcing him to be a better player.

Sampras is also honest in stating that he is a great player. At first glance, this would seem like arrogance, but he is someone who (often brutally) honest about himself, others, and the world around him. He is by no means trying to be a braggart. Rather, he just wants to portray what he sees as his success and the reasons why.

I am not sure that I found this book to be as good as the one by Agassi, but I did find it really enjoyable. Fans of tennis, particularly, the error in which Agassi, Sampras, Michael Change, and Jim Courier played, will find this book to be pretty interesting.