Sampras says he'll play on in 2003

U.S Open champion Pete Sampras is to continue playing on the ATP Tour for at least one more season but will skip January's Australian Open.

Sampras, 31, ended a two-year barren run in September in New York by winning the U.S. Open for his 14th grand slam title -- more than any other player in men's tennis history.

Following his success in New York he withdrew from the remaining ATP tournaments of the year, fuelling rumours that he was set to retire.

"I'll start in February in San Jose," he told the Los Angeles Times website. "And then go right from there to tournaments in Scottsdale, Indian Wells and Miami."

"I understand that, week in and week out, I don't have what I had when I was number one in the world.

"To do that, to stay there, it has to be your total life, you have to live and breathe it. But that doesn't mean I can't still win the big ones. That's why I play."

Sampras claimed the U.S title with an emotional victory over Andre Agassi and silenced his critics who said he should have retired.

Prior to the Flushing Meadow victory, Sampras had not won a tournament since taking the title at Wimbledon in 2000. In 2001 he slumped out of Wimbledon, where he had won a record seven times, in the second round.

"The last couple of years were tough," he said. "It took a lot out of me, emotionally, to not play well and to have to talk about it all the time.

"Of all the majors, that was the sweetest," he said of the U.S. Open triumph. "It was just hard to stop that. There were many moments when I seriously talked about stopping.

"Once I won, I felt like I had wiped out two years of criticism in two weeks of tennis."

Sampras's wife Bridgette gave birth to their first child last month.

The report on the Los Angeles Times website said he would miss the Australian Open due to a lack of preparation time but intended to play the French Open, Wimbledon and defend his title at Flushing Meadow.