“I still want to win,” said Sampras.
“It’s still competitive. We all have a lot of pride in playing well and winning. It’s not like I need to come here and ‘have’ to win the event like when I was in my mid-20s when it was a question of ‘all or nothing’. But that said, people want to see me play well and all the guys play well so we all do take a lot of pride in doing what we used to do. For me, I still want to win and I still want to play good tennis.”
It completes the circle for Sampras, who has not set foot in England since his last Wimbledon in 2002. However, John McEnroe warned all of his opponents not to think he would be an easy opponent to be overcome. He sent a video message to the other tennis players involved in the event teling them not to be concentrating on his age, because John McEnroe is "just a little bit older" than them.
