Excerpted from the July/August 2002 issue of TENNIS Magazine

Last fall, Pete Sampras had quite a few late nights. He'd get into bed with his wife, Bridgette Wilson, at their Beverly Hills, Calif., home, but instead of giving Bridgette a good-night kiss and rolling over to sleep, he'd unburden himself. Sampras was at a crossroads, and he needed direction from the person he trusts most.

"We would get into bed at 11 or 12 and be up talking until three in the morning," Bridgette says. "There were no phone calls or distractions. Just us." The topic of conversation was Pete's career, which had been in a downward spiral. It was a heavy subject, but one Pete felt comfortable discussing with Bridgette. "I internalize a lot, but I don't with my wife," he says. "I let my guard down. I tell her my feelings, where I am with everything. She always looks at the positive things, and I need to hear that and be around that. I'm a little bit of a pessimist. I get that from my dad."

Pete's inner pessimist was frustrated. The optimist lying beside him suggested that he rededicate himself to tennis, work harder than ever and give the game that's made him a legend one more push. Deep down, Pete liked the sound of that.

"I want to end my career on my terms, not on what people think I should do," he says. "I could've stopped and felt good about what I've done in my career, but that wouldn't have sat well with me. I wanted to keep going."

It's not easy being Pete Sampras these days. He hasn't won a tournament since Wimbledon 2000, where he set the men's record for the most Grand Slam singles titles (13). This spring was particularly rough. He got schooled by Wayne Ferreira in Scottsdale and Lleyton Hewitt in Indian Wells. A qualifier, Chile's Fernando Gonzalez, made him look every bit the 30-year-old at the NASDAQ-100. Then, at America's Davis Cup tie in Houston, which was played on grass in part to increase Pete's chances of winning, the seven-time Wimbledon champion lost to Spain's Alex Corretja, whose aversion to turf rivals Pete's disdain for clay.

Now Sampras is hearing it from the peanut gallery: Pete, you're washed up. Pete, you're embarrassing yourself. Pete, retire already. In April, when Yevgeny Kafelnikov said that Pete should hang it up, Sampras replied, "The day I need to respond to him is the day I will retire."

Although Sampras tries not to let it bother him, some things are tough to take. Consider an incident at last year's U.S. Open. After beating Patrick Rafter in the fourth round in 2001, Sampras says, "Mary Carillo looked at me and was shocked. I kind of took offense to that a little bit, like 'What's the big deal?' When moments like that begin to surprise me, I'll be lying on a beach. I'm sure a lot of people have written me off, but even if you've hit 30 or 31, it's a bunch of crap that you're done in tennis. It's a challenge to prove people wrong."