Robert Lansdorp and the Champion's Mind -

Taking lessons from Robert Lansdorp put me in the thick of Southern California tennis.

Editor’s Note: This exclusive excerpt from Pete Sampras’s new autobiography tells the story of Robert Lansdorp’s early and lasting influence on Pete’s game starting when the Sampras family moved from Maryland to Palos Verdes California in 1978.

Shortly after we got to Palos Verdes, we found out that it was a tennis-rich environment. The Jack Kramer Club, which had been instrumental in developing so many ﬁne players (including Tracy Austin), was nearby in Rolling Hills. And then there was West End, where I began taking lessons from one of the all-time great coaches, Robert Lansdorp.

I was a shy, introverted kid, but if you “took” from Lansdorp, you were right in the thick of things and a lot of people checked you out. It seems weird now, but we were told shortly after I started working on my game that I was going to be a great tennis player. Almost immediately, people were comparing me to guys like Eliot Teltscher, saying I was as good at fourteen as Eliot, a prodigy, had been at sixteen. (He went on to have a great pro career, becoming a…