Unfamiliar taste of defeat for a dignified champion

An unwritten but generally ruthlessly enforced rule was broken in the Centre Court press box last night at the moment when Pete Sampras finally lost his hold on Wimbledon.

The culprit was Bud Collins, who is best known to television audiences here for his psychedelic wardrobe but back home in America is widely respected as the doyen of tennis writers who pens a breezy but often passionate column for the prestigious Boston Globe.

Collins apologised to his colleagues, said that he realised he was defying a sacred edict that stretched back to the legendary scribe Grantland Rice, and then stood up and applauded the beaten champion.

"Sometimes," he said, "rules are there to be broken and this is one of those times. Boy, what a champion, what a sportsman." To which one could only say Amen.

Some hold that Sampras' reign at Wimbledon, his seven titles, four of them straight since he beat the Frenchman Cedric Pioline in 1997, represents a period of unsurpassed boredom.

They say that Sampras, for all his technical skill and ironclad temperament, has been a dead hand on the game's greatest showpiece.

But they are, you have to say, the same people who argued that it was monotonous to see Tiger Woods annex St Andrews last year at the British Open on his way to a stunning run of four straight major titles.

They are the kind of people, frankly, who mistake celebrity and pyrotechnic personality for the serious business of achieving true greatness in the sports arena.

Pete Sampras was not a dead hand at Wimbledon. He was a superb example to a whole generation of aspiring young stars. His performance was about the best of standards, about doing what you did with dignity and a relentless professionalism.

For as long as he could, he held back the brilliant tide of youth without ever lowering his standards of behaviour, without angst or tantrum, and if last night the emotional Mr Collins needed any reinforcement of his taboo-shaking gesture it came in the demeanour of the losing champion.

After going down to the 19-year-old Swiss player, a cool gifted representative of the generation which is now pressing so hard for its place among the sport's élite at this Wimbledon, Sampras said of his conqueror: "I lost to a really, really good player today. He played great. He's a great shot-maker. He won the big points. I had my chances throughout the match, had a couple of great points there in the fifth, but you know he came up with some really good stuff at huge times. He played a great game to break me. I give him a lot of credit.''

There was a champion at a moment of his cruellest loss. There was Pete Sampras, who is supposed not to lift the spirits, handing on a baton without a hint of pique. He was asked about the bite of frustration, the unfamiliar taste of defeat.

"You know grass-court tennis goes by pretty quick. One minute you feel like you have it and the next minute you are walking off the court.

"I am just disappointed. You know it's rare that I've lost a close match here at Wimbledon. But you know something so great isn't going to last forever. The truth is today I just came up a little bit short. I always knew it could happen.''

Later, he insisted that he would be back. He agreed that he had to deal with new motivational problems, what with the adjustment involved in his marriage to the actress Brigitte Wilson and the fact that he is about to hit 30, but still he had a game, a decent game and he wasn't about to run away.

No-one needed to tell him that the pressures on him have never been greater. As his old adversary Jim Courier has said, good, brilliant kids like Roger Federer are coming out of the woodwork now.

But as long as Pete Sampras is around they will have someone to set their standards by. They will have a vision of what it is to be a great champion – and a good man.