By Charles Bricker

I suppose it's time to say goodbye to Marat Safin, but where do you start with his enormously wasted careeer? Almost at the beginning, with his triumph at age 20 over Pete Sampras in the final of the 2000 U.S. Open?

Or should we begin at the 2004 French Open, another great memory -- where he dropped his shorts after an interminably long but beautiful point against Felix Mantilla and where, in an interview a few days later, he held up several sushi-grade fingers, worn to the nub by blisters, in a loss to David Nalbandian.

I don't know. What a character! It's all good, isn't it? And almost all bad at the same time. This beautifully constructed, immensely gifted tennis player who spent the last nine years squandering his talent.

I could probably sum up the waste by telling you that he won 15 titles in his perplexing career, the last being a Grand Slam championship at the Australian Open in 2005. He wins his second major and then . . . poof. Nothing.

A little more than nine years ago, I sat in a post-final press conference at the U.S. Tennis Center, listening to a strangely unaffected Sampras herald the coming of the next dominant men's player.

"Beating me the way he did (straight sets), he's going to have an aura about him for the rest of the year and beyond," said Pete. "Being so dominant, playing so great in such a big match. . .but things will be different for him.

"Once you win that Grand Slam, the pressure definitely is inflated a little bit. We all have experienced it. I think he'll handle it fine. But I'm sure he'll go through his lulls over his career."

And then, the nut summation from Sampras: "I think, all in all, he's going to be in contention for Grand Slams forever."

Pete was asked that day if Safin could not only reach No. 1, but stay there a long time. "He could if he wants to do it," Sampras replied. "It's a decision you have to make on your life and how much you want to be on top of the game, deal with the pressures.

"The way he played today and these two weeks, he can be No. 1 for many, many years. Because of his game, he can play well on the clay, obviously. And on the fast, hard court. On grass, he can do pretty well, I think. I mean, he can really be dominant because of his power."

Safin had almost everything needed to supplant Sampras. Big serve, ability to get to the net, impeccable backhand, strong forehand. He was physically imposing. With the exception of the final points in that third set against Pete, where he had some minor nervousness, he was completely hinged in his first major final.

He had almost everything he needed. He never had a head for the game.

He had already established a well deserved reputation as a racket-buster when he arrived at the 2000 U.S. Open. Whoever represented Head rackets in those days was a busy boy with Safin. But his short temper didn't seem a problem at the time. It never seemed to bother Goran Ivanisevic, who reached three Wimbledon finals. Why should it affect Safin's game?

But there were other small signs of emotional instability. After beating Thierry Guardiola in the first round at the Open, Safin went into a funk over his next match, against slice-and-dice Italian Gianluca Pozzi, who had beaten the big guy on grass at Queens earlier in the year.

"I can't beat this guy. He drives me crazy," Safin said, showing no belief in himself. But he won in five. Then, after blowing a two-set lead, beat Sebastien Grosjean in the third round.

Next, he left his extra socks and shorts at his hotel in Manhattan and had to borrow clothes from Nicolas Kiefer. If we'd all been alert, we would have figured, "No way this guy is a champion. He's a ditz." But the fact is we all thought all this stuff was charming.

So he won the Open in front of 24,000 and a players box packed with his coach, Alexander Volkov, and about a dozen Russian babes who made Anna Kournikova look like a grade-school beauty queen. Afterward, he rented out the old Russian Tea Room in Manhattan and the vodka flowed all night.

He followed up by doing almost nothing in the first half of 2001, losing in the round of 16 at Australia to Dominik Hrbaty and going out in his first match at Key Biscayne to a doubles player named Juan Barcells.

At the '01 French I ran into Andrei Medvedev, the Ukrainian who was then at the end of his career, and I asked him what was wrong with Safin.

"The Russians have a saying," he said. "We win one year. . .we celebrate the next." I laughed, but he had it pegged.

Over the next several years there would be so many "Safin moments." Dropping his shorts at the French was a hoot, but it cost him a point penalty and he ripped into the entire tennis establishment afterward.

"They tried to destroy the match. All the people who run the sport, they have no clue. It's a pity that tennis is really going down the drain. Every year it's getting worse and worse and worse. There has to be a radical change, and I hope it will be really soon," he ranted.

And there was his blisters vs. Nalbandian. I still cringe looking at how reddened they were. And so many other times when this mountain of a player would emit a complete lack of confidence in himself or his game.

It never made much sense.

Marat has played 17 majors since his triumph at Australia and been past the fourth round just once, in his last hurrah at the 2008 Wimbledon, where he played his last great match in defeating Novak Djokovic in straights in the second round.

He lost to Roger Federer that year in the semis and, in 2009, has waded through a season filled with more nostalgia than victories after announcing this was his last year.

How does he want to be remembered? "As a decent tennis player," he replied.

He'll get his wish. He was certainly a decent player. Even more than a decent player with two Slams and four weeks at No. 1. But there could have been so much more.

You have to want it, Sampras said back in 2000. Safin never really did.

Charles Bricker can be reached at bricker@tennisnews.com