📍Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275, USA
1978 – 1990“Pete Sampras was born in Washington, DC, in August 1971 and spent his first years in Potomac, Maryland, where at three he found an old racket in the basement and spent hours hitting balls against the wall. His mother, Georgia, had emigrated from Sparta in Greece, and his father, Sam, the son of a Greek father, worked as an aerospace engineer; the family were Greek Orthodox and went to church every Sunday. In 1978, when Pete was seven, his father took a job in the aviation industry in California, and the family moved to Rancho Palos Verdes, a hilly, wealthy peninsula south of Los Angeles with ocean views. The Sampras children took lessons at the Peninsula Racquet Club, and the family joined the nearby Jack Kramer Club in Rolling Hills. When Pete was eight, his parents asked Peter Fischer, a paediatrician and tennis enthusiast, to coach him, and Fischer had him watch old films of Rod Laver, his idol, and change from a two-handed to a one-handed backhand so that he could one day win Wimbledon. At eleven he even hit with Laver. Later the demanding coach Robert Lansdorp sharpened his groundstrokes. He was quiet and shy, and he let his tennis speak for him. He turned professional at sixteen in 1988, and in 1990, at nineteen, became the youngest US Open men's champion. He went on to win fourteen Grand Slam titles, including seven Wimbledons, and finished six years in a row as world number one. He has lived in Southern California ever since.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today