NEW YORK -- Does the football know Jerry Rice is too old? Does the music know Mick Jagger is? What about Catherine Zeta-Jones? Think she wakes up in her beautiful life with her beautiful baby at one of her beautiful homes and says: "Geez, I can't believe my husband ... is ... too ... old."

	Pete Sampras needs a break after an emotional Open.

Hey, Pete Sampras at 31 is barely entering prime time (not to mention his own fatherhood), hardly losing value (even while his barbed curls disappear) and -- as most antique dealers might have predicted -- is right back in the final of the U.S. Open where he's been a fixture for what seems like the past two millenniums.

Actually, it's merely the third straight year Sampras has made the championship round at Flushing Meadows -- eight finals in all with four titles. But hosanna's all around because it's not as if he's been slogging past a bunch of Michael Douglases (that's Zeta-Jones' ancient hubby) these past two weeks. Greg Rusedski, the monster-serving, pseudo-Brit ... down. Tommy Haas, No. 3 in the world ... out. Andy (The Future Of The Game) Roddick ... down, out, dead and spiked-hair gone. But: "I've never thought of myself as an underdog," The Pistol said Saturday after his straight-sets victory over surprise semifinalist Sjeng Schalken, which was a rare Open moment where he hadn't been an odds-maker's 'dog. "In my heart I still believe I'm the one to beat."

But of course Schalken -- Thanks for coming here to Kutscher's, everybody. Now enjoy ... Jerry Vale! -- knew exactly that all along. The 6-3 Dutchman was the only player to take a set off No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt at Wimbledon when he almost beat the champion over five sets. He's got the ugliest, slowest serve in the business and his picturesque backhand, lack of pace and wily aptitude for using all quadrants and corners of the court figured to give Sampras difficulty on an energy-sapping, shimmering-hot day that actually began for the combatants at 11 a.m.

"Pete's never been a good 'morning' person," Sampras' former and now thankfully re-instated coach, Paul Annacone, whispered to CBS' Pam Shriver a few games into the match. (And Annacone wasn't joking.) "He needs to pick up the pace. Maybe things will turn around after he wakes up."

	“	You've still just got to remember my ability. I never question that. Even though it's been a struggle and I've lost confidence through the year at certain times, I've never questioned that I could be back here. ”
		— Pete Sampras

Or after Sampras figured out whether and when to take a full swing, chip or block back Schalken's astoundingly lame service offerings, which seldom reach 100 mph and are delivered in a stiff-kneed, straight-backed pose that makes the Sjengster appear to have a corncob up his rear end. That discovery took him all the way to the tiebreak in the first set when Sampras went ahead, 4-0, only to drop five straight points and then go set point down.

Given that the future Hall Of Famer's tiebreak record was only 14-14 in his terrible 2002, and that he'd dropped no less than five matches in final-set tiebreaks, the signs were not good. But, in a microcosm of this Open vis-à-vis his harrowing season, Pete unleashed a couple of enormous serves and volleys -- "Because he's placing it at 120 mph, I couldn't touch the ball," said Schalken -- and pulled out the breaker, 8-6.

"Yahhhh! That's What I'm Talkin' About," Sampras screamed up at the stands in a thoroughly un-Pete-like burst of emotion. Shortly, he added a second-set tiebreak win (at 7-4) and went on to scald Schalken in straights, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (2), 6-2 to win his 202nd career match at the Open, third overall in history behind only Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl.

"In the shape (Sampras) is in now," said a deflated Schalken, "he's again one step higher, one step faster ... It's the U.S. Open. He fires himself up for the U.S. Open."

Miraculously, really, to anybody who remembers the slumping and searching Sampras, who has lost in his past 33 tournaments, the hangdog and desperate Sampras who was humiliated in the first and second rounds at the French Open and Wimbledon by those twin immortals, Andrea Gaudenzi and George Bastl. That was the Sampras who changed coaches as if he was Notre Dame and read love letters from his wife during changeovers as if he was Jeremy Northam in Possession.

Following his shocking collapse at Wimbledon -- "a nightmare, the emptiest I've felt in many years," he said -- Sampras reassessed, cut his coaching losses and turned back to Annacone, the quiet, unassuming former tour player and mentor who had been an invaluable aide-de-camp through much of his 13-Grand Slams winning career. In addition, Pete obviously came to grips with his new elder-statesman, no-longer-top-gun position in the game -- "the years of dominating are over," he admitted Saturday -- relaxed and hit the comeback trail.

Sampras lost to Haas at the Canadian Open, Wayne Arthurs in Cincinnati and Paul-Henri Mathieu (no relation to Marcel Marceau, though, the young Frenchman has so far pretty much mimed a career) at an Open warm-up on Long Island. But ...

"You've still just got to remember my ability. I never question that," Pete said. "Even though it's been a struggle and I've lost confidence through the year at certain times, I've never questioned that I could be back here."

As for Annacone, who in his absence from Sampras hired on with the USTA as the "Managing Director of USA Tennis High Performance": "He knows me as a tennis player better than anyone," Pete said. "There were moments this year where I didn't have that coaching stability that you need, and Paul knows how I should play. So much of this year has been mental. It's not about forehands and backhands, it's about being positive, having a good attitude. It's paying off this week. Paul knows what to say, what not to say, and working with him again is a big reason why I've been able to kind of get it going here."

	“	There were times, five years ago, where tennis was my life, (I was) consumed with being No. 1. ”
		— Pete Sampras

Kind of? Like, uh, managing a high performance?

At least now, maybe anti-romanticists will quit blaming the pregnant (due in December) Bridgette Wilson-Sampras for her husband's slump. No more "Yoko Wilson"? Well, months ago the newly emotive Sampras revealed that he was up all night with his better half "letting down my guard ... telling her how I feel." Then it hardly seemed coincidental that Pete's best result in 2002 was reaching the finals at the U.S. Men's Clay Courts in Houston -- when Wilson stayed at home. And then there were Bridgette's big hit movies:

House On A Haunted Hill

And: Love Stinks

Not long ago a newly convivial Sampras -- even at the depth of his tennis -- had regained his dry wit and sense of humor. Speaking of his wife's pregnancy, he quipped: "At least I did something right this year.

"There were times, five years ago, where tennis was my life, (I was) consumed with being No. 1," Pete said on Saturday to a media who won't soon forget his personalizing matches at the Open to the point of dedicating his '95 title to his dying coach, Tim Gullickson, and repeating in '96 despite being nearly felled by exhaustion and vomiting against Alex Corretja. "Just being on top for so long, I think I kind of had enough. Getting married and having a future child gives me some balance."

The year-long epitaphs about Sampras have passed over the facts that he has been a special player in New York, even in the past two Opens where he was, in his words, "smoked" in straights, both by Marat Safin and Hewitt. But -- unlike at all the other Slams -- the ancient mariner never gets a day off before the championship match; last September, having disposed of three former Open winners, Patrick Rafter, Andre Agassi (in one of the matches of the decade) and Safin, Sampras had nothing left for Hewitt.

On Sunday, however -- Double A having brat-slapped Hewitt nearly back to Adelaide -- creaky ancient guy meets creaky ancient guy. The Stones and The Who at 50 paces? "A great clash," said Sampras. "It will be one to remember."

That's if the creaky ancient guys aren't too senile to forget.

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.