ATP Tour

On This Day: Sampras completes mad dash for record sixth straight year-end No. 1 finish

When Pete Sampras won his last professional match, beating Andre Agassi in the 2002 US Open final, he earned a record-extending 14th Grand Slam title and tied Jimmy Connors’ record of five US Open men’s singles crowns. The American also finished his career having spent 286 weeks at No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings.

Those marks seemed insurmountable at the time, but all three records were eventually matched or broken by the Big 3. Still, there is at least one Sampras record that has remained untouchable: His six consecutive year-end No. 1 finishes from 1993-98. Roger Federer achieved the feat four years in a row (2004-07) and Novak Djokovic did it in back-to-back years on three occasions, while Rafael Nadal never finished No. 1 in consecutive seasons.

“It’s an ultimate achievement. It will probably never be broken,” Sampras said of the milestone, which was confirmed on 26 November 1998. “I’m trying to stay humble through all this, but the record speaks for itself. It’s a little overwhelming.”

Across Sampras’ six-year reign, he was knocked off the summit six different times and repeatedly wrestled his way back to the top of the PIF ATP Rankings.

He was never pushed closer for the year-end honours than in 1998, when Marcelo Rios twice unseated him at No. 1 for a combined six weeks. Following a semi-final defeat to eventual champion Patrick Rafter at the US Open, Sampras held a narrow lead over the Chilean atop the PIF ATP Rankings. The final two months of the ATP Tour season would determine whether Sampras could break Connors’ record of five straight year-end No. 1 finishes.

In an all-out bid to hold off Rios, Sampras competed in seven ATP Tour events across October and November. Rios played six in his own mad dash for the finish line.

“It wasn't fun, I'll be honest with you,” Sampras said. “I had one chance to break this record, this all-time record of six years in a row. I was like, ‘Alright, if I'm going to have to be over here [in Europe] for another three or four weeks, I'll do it.’ And I did it. 

“It felt great, but it definitely took a lot out of me emotionally, even the next few years. It's very hard to stay No. 1, and to do it six years in a row... For me in my career, I look back at that — and I've won a lot of majors and I've done some great things — but staying No. 1 all those years I think was my biggest achievement, just to be dominant. And to not just stay No. 1 for six months or year, but to really cement that.”

Sampras' 1998 run-in began with a first-round defeat in Basel before he crucially claimed his fourth title of the season the following week as a late wild card in Vienna, just as Rios lifted a trophy of his own in Singapore. (Sampras’ spot in Vienna came courtesy of Boris Becker, who offered his own wild card to the American.) Both men traveled to Lyon next but pulled out of the tournament as their bodies broke down; Sampras withdrew ahead of the quarter-finals with a back problem before Rios retired in his semi-final match against Tommy Haas.

Next up were two ATP Masters 1000s in Stuttgart and Paris. While Rios reached the quarter-finals at both, Sampras reached the semis and the final at the respective tournaments, padding his lead in the PIF ATP Rankings.

But Sampras stalled in Stockholm, where the mental toll of his late-season push was evident. After losing a first-set tie-break in an eventual three-set defeat to World No. 29 Jason Stoltenberg, the typically stoic American smashed his racquet in a rare outburst. 

“The European circuit in the fall is no picnic, even at the best of times,” Sampras wrote in his autobiography, “A Champion’s Mind”. “It’s cold, it gets dark early, and you’re playing night matches in massive arenas under artificial lights. At the end of the long, hard Grand Slam season, that ambience can leave you feeling like you’re living in some strange, parallel universe.”

However, the American’s opening-round exit in Stockholm had a silver lining: It afforded him two weeks off before the ATP World Tour Championships (now the Nitto ATP Finals), where year-end No. 1 honors would be decided.

Sampras entered the Hanover season finale with a slim lead of 33 points in the PIF ATP Rankings, meaning he needed to match or better Rios’ total at the year-end showcase to complete his No. 1 mission. With the pressure ratcheted up, Sampras rediscovered his peak form in the group stage, posting a 3-0 record and losing just 15 games in six sets against Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Carlos Moya and Karol Kucera.

While the American was beaten by eventual champion Alex Corretja in the semis — two years after Sampras’ epic 1996 US Open quarter-final win against the Spaniard, during which he famously threw up on the court — he had secured year-end No. 1 honours long before the knockout rounds. Rios, after losing to Tim Henman in his opening round-robin match, was forced to withdraw from the event with a back injury, confirming Sampras as No. 1. He was eating pasta in his hotel when he heard the news.

Sampras’ six consecutive year-end No. 1 finishes remain a PIF ATP Rankings record. Only Sampras and Djokovic, who has earned year-end No. 1 honours eight times, have achieved the feat more than five times in total.