In this new series on USOpen.org, we examine the tactics that led to the title. In addition to telling you what happened in the championship match, we take a closer look at the "how" and the "why." Up next: how Pete Sampras neutralized the greatest returner of his era.
The biggest server in the game against the best returner of his generation. The proverbial irresistible force against the immovable object.
Hard-hitting Pete Sampras won his first US Open men’s singles title—and his first major championship—in 1990, defeating fellow American Andre Agassi in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2.
Sampras came into the tournament as the No. 12 seed, having missed the French Open and losing in the first round of Wimbledon for the second year in a row.
Agassi, seeded fourth and known for his blistering return game, was contesting his second major final of the season after a run to championship Sunday in Paris in May. He had made the semifinals of the US Open in both 1988 and 1989 and, like Sampras, was looking for his first Slam crown.
But despite a hectic hard-court season and a string of grueling matches to reach the final in New York, Sampras, just 19 years old, seemed anything but fatigued against Agassi, a man who had crushed him on clay in Rome the previous year.
This time, things were very different, and the match was dictated entirely on Sampras’ racquet, with the teenager employing three dominant themes on his serve.
- Serving wide to the forehand and backhand equally on both sides of the court on his first serve to keep Agassi guessing.
- Coming to the net behind every first serve Agassi got back in play.
- Serving predominantly into the body on the second serve.
Sampras won 35 of 38 points on his first serve, hitting 12 aces and recording 10 more unreturnable serves. When Agassi did get the first serve back, Sampras came forward on all 16 points, either hitting a volley or a mid-range approach shot on every ball. The only three points Agassi won on Sampras’ first serve came when Sampras missed his first volley—once in the second set and twice in the third set.
In fact, Sampras did not face a break point until the third set and, in 13 consecutive service holds, held at love or at 15 eight times. Highlighting how much Agassi was on the defensive, he came to the net just seven times in total, and not once on Sampras’ serve.
"Definitely the better man won today," Agassi said. “When you can hit a serve 120 [mph] on the lines, there’s not a lot you can do about it."
Entering the final, Sampras had only dropped serve 12 times in six matches. And against the best returner in the game, it was expected that Sampras would need to mix up his plan to keep Agassi off balance.
He executed this plan perfectly, with 38 percent of all serves going up the middle and 29 percent out wide. Only in the third set when Agassi started to create break points did Sampras start favoring his ’T’ serve much more regularly.
Sampras chose to go wide a little more in the deuce court to Agassi’s forehand, and that had the added benefit of pulling Agassi into the doubles alley, opening up the court for an easy backhand volley when he came forward and guarded against a down-the-line forehand, the only shot Agassi would have realistically been able to hit.
On the occasions when the second ball he hit in a rally was a volley in or around the service line, he lost just six points.
Importantly, Agassi never chose to step back from the baseline to return serve in the same way we have seen Rafael Nadal and Dominic Thiem do at the US Open in recent years.
"I just go up there and try to hit it as hard as I can and try to aim for the line," Sampras said after his win. "If I’m having a good day, they’re going to go in, and today was one of those good days.
“From the first point, [Agassi] was really tentative hitting a lot of short balls. I picked that up, and I really had nothing to lose all tournament. Today I was really comfortable. From the first point on, I was hitting the ball really well."
But if Agassi was looking wide on the first serve, he got another different look on the second serve. Looking at Sampras’ second serve, he won 20 of 34 points. More than half of all Sampras’ second serves in the final were targeted in the middle third of the service box at Agassi’s body. As on the first serve, Agassi remained stubborn and just inches behind the baseline.
The majority of the points that Agassi did win on Sampras’ second serve came when he returned the ball deep, forcing Sampras to hit his second shot from behind the baseline. Unfortunately for Agassi, when he was jammed, he was unable to take the kind of full swings at the ball that generated those deep returns.
In total, of the 41 times on his serve when he had to hit a second ball, 23 times were either volleys or half volleys. Sampras won three-quarters of these points.
Sampras won 55 points on serve. The average rally length was 2.75 shots. In 44 of those 55 points he won, Sampras did not need to hit the ball a third time, highlighting the dominance of not only his serve, but also the combination of the serve plus his second shot.
