NEW YORK -- Is it entirely possible that Pete Sampras lost the U.S. Open when he won his huge fourth-round match against the former two-time winner, Pat Rafter? Or maybe when he won that quarterfinal epic, outlasting his great rival, Andre Agassi, over four tiebreaks, past midnight, and into the firmament of unforgettable history? Or might he have lost it even later, when he won the semifinal, playing Avenging Angel, blasting out the infant defending champion who had embarrassed him last year, Marat Safin?

Actually, no ... no ... and not really.

Having taken out three of the tournament's champions in succession -- only to end up in the finals facing another young gun in a backward baseball cap and a bright orange T-shirt, looking like some pimply dorm rat just up from Clemson or someplace -- Pete Sampras never actually did lose this Open. A rollicking, rip-snorting, positively un-awestruck 20-year-old Aussie from Adelaide named Lleyton Hewitt won it -- by the thoroughly shocking score of 7-6 (4), 6-1, 6-1. Decimated it, dominated it, drove it from the wearying 13-time Grand Slam champ's grasp with his quicksilver legs and even quicker service returns that left Sampras not merely bewildered, but looking slow, awkward and worst of all, old.

"I was hoping destiny would come through for me," Sampras said later. "It was a tough road but a good road. I played a number of great matches here, but I can walk out of here with my head up because this kid was just too good ... on fire ... phenomenal."

Indeed, Hewitt was all of that -- and from the jump, when he broke Sampras' serve in the very first game of the match. That was surprising enough in that the 30-year-old Sampras had been on a streak of 87 consecutive service holds in last week's heartwarming stretch of unexpected wins that transformed him from this tennis season's Forgotten Man into New York's mayor of Resurrection City.

But even after Hewitt double-faulted twice in the very next game and Sampras broke back, "(It) wasn't a start I was looking for," Sampras said. "I wanted to set the tone ... put some pressure on him. Didn't want to get in long, grueling rallies with Lleyton. That's his strength. But the times I was aggressive, he came up with some great shots."

As in the first set tiebreak, which turned out to basically decide the match. Here, too, Hewitt began with a bang, rifling a return too hot for Sampras to handle. At 4-3, Hewitt absolutely cold-cocked another screaming backhand pass down the line that left Sampras shaking his head and gave the new guy a mini-break at 5-3, which he carried through to clinch the breaker when Sampras missed a volley.

There was a lot of that in the following two sets, laughers for Hewitt actually as Sampras' game (38 unforced errors) fell apart under the onslaught of Hewitt's quickness, athleticism and steadiness. Patterns repeated. Sampras would serve. Hewitt would return the ball past him. Or: Sampras would approach and come to net. Hewitt would drill the ball past him. Puzzlingly, Sampras kept serving to Hewitt's supposedly weaker backhand. But the Aussie kept sending rockets to the corners -- he had 15 winners off that side to Sampras' two. In the second two sets, over 14 games, Hewitt committed precisely three errors as he broke the finest server in the sport in five of Sampras' last six service games.

In truth, Hewitt is barely 5-foot-11 and 150 pounds -- "a frisky little beast" in the words of CBS's house phraseologist Mary Carillo -- and a fascinating type of Anti-Aussie, style-wise -- eschewing the traditional, serve-and volley-power game for a composite of his personal role models: Jimmy Connors, the emotional, arrogant firewalker; Mats Wilander, the epitome of Swedish consistency; Michael Chang, roadrunner extraordinaire; and Sampras' fearsome foil himself, Agassi, long considered the best returner in the game.

"(Chang and Hewitt) are the two quickest guys I've played," Sampras said. "But Lleyton possesses, you know, a bit better game."

Is he a better returner than Andre at this point?

"Yeah," said Sampras, "because he's quicker. Maybe not quite the power. But he doesn't miss. He's very tough to ace. He's got the hands and the feet. It's phenomenal. Really pretty impressive stuff."

And it's not that Hewitt's come out of nowhere, either. Prior to Sunday, he'd beaten Sampras three times -- twice on grass! -- the last two years at the Queen's run-up tournament to Wimbledon as well as in the Grand Slam Cup in Lisbon last year where he laid a 6-0 bagel set on his distinguished elder. And surely Sampras also remembered last year's Open semifinal wherein he turned back Hewitt only after the then-teenager kept him out on court for two tiebreaks, probably exhausting him sufficiently enough so as not to be prepared for Safin's howitzer game in the championship round.

The son of a former Aussie Rules football player, Hewitt grew up on that rough, macho game and still longs to strap it on for his hometown Adelaide Crows. A fullout patriot, his astounding performance at the Open only parallels his previous career favorite performances -- heroically leading Australia in dramatic Davis Cup ties against both Spain and Brazil, the latter in April when he defeated the best clay-courter in the world, Gustavo Kuerten, on his own home clay.

"I can't remember a time when I haven't been mentally tough," said Hewitt, who debuted at the Australian Open in 1997 when he was just 15. Only a year later he won his hometown title in Adelaide to become the youngest tour winner since Chang and the lowest ranked winner in history. He was No. 550 at the time.

"I've never been as big and strong as a lot of guys," Hewitt said. "I never played my own age group in the juniors, always two, three years above my age. I had to find a way to have an edge. So obviously my movement was the thing."

Impressively, Hewitt managed his lightning movements through his breakthrough Open -- all the while blocking out the controversy engendered in his second-round match against James Blake, the young African-American player out of Harvard. After Hewitt ridiculed a black linesman for some questionable lines calls, noting his "similarities" to Blake, he had to withstand criticism that he was a racist -- even after he apologized to both the public and to Blake.

"The off-court stuff doesn't help when you're trying to win a Slam," Sampras said. "But that seemed to settle down. (Lleyton) just got back to business. He put everything aside and focused on what he had to do. He's a fighter. That's how he wins his matches."

"It was one of (my) worst moments, yeah," said Hewitt on Sunday. "I copped a lot of flak for something I didn't mean at all. I was really innocent in the whole thing. That's why I tried to block it out. But it's something I can learn from."

Moreover, in all the commotion over the Sampras-Agassi quarterfinal Legends-Off, Hewitt's own five-set epic victory over the spectacular young American teen, Andy Roddick, the very next night seemed to get lost. But for the record, the two played longer, at times better and with just as much energy, passion and sustained thrills as the old folks in a match that also concluded in controversy when Roddick got hosed on a terrible call in the final game.

"Against Andy, I think I played some of my best tennis," the new champion said. "I still think I'm on that high the last few matches."

Now that adds to the developments that both Sampras and Agassi -- as he wobbles into fatherhood -- and all the rest of tennis' graybeards can sink their teeth into as they ponder the ramifications of an Open that was set aflame by the Williams Sisters ... and Roddick ... and this wispy little whipperwhill who is the new prince of Flushing Meadow. Namely, how it felt to be so young -- Hewitt still wears his junior photograph on his Open player badge and he cannot be served a beer in the Big Apple -- gifted, gritty, the U.S. Open champion and on top of the entire tennis world, as well.

Curry Kirkpatrick is covering the U.S. Open for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.