You Cannot Be Serious (22 page)

Don Budge was calling that night to tell me how to beat Lendl.

“You’ve got to attack him right up the middle,” he said. “Stop giving him the angles—he’s killing you on those angles.”

It was simple advice, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Lendl loved to run, he could go all day, and his groundstrokes were tremendous. He
liked
being stretched out in the corners. If I approached up the middle, he’d be forced to lob or hit to my volley—my strengths. I’d be taking back the angles.

Suddenly, I had a game plan against Lendl that I hadn’t had before—and it worked: I won the final in four sets. Putting Don’s counsel to work in that tournament gave me back my confidence that, despite Ivan’s tremendous power and conditioning, my game—going quickly from defense to offense, using my speed to get to net, and using the angles—could ultimately beat his game. I would win my next eight matches against him.

Meanwhile, though, little things happened that kept me off my game for weeks at a time and prevented me from dominating the tour. Ironically, during the final with Lendl, I had tweaked my shoulder, but my adrenaline was so high that I barely felt it. The next day, though, I could hardly lift my arm. It was still hurting when we went down to Buenos Aires to play our first-round Davis Cup tie against Argentina, and I lost both my singles matches. After Clerc beat me in five tough sets in the first, I went flat as a pancake against Vilas, who came from 2–4 in the first set to win the next fifteen games in a row against me! I’d literally never been steamrolled like that before—maybe it was why I was able to crack one of my first jokes ever in a tight situation, a rarity that produced an even greater rarity—an on-court laugh from Captain Arthur Ashe! Down 4–6, 0–6, 0–5, I walked over to Arthur and asked, “What should I do?” He cracked up.

P.S.—I saved my honor by pulling out that game and avoiding the double-bagel. But Argentina beat us, 3–2, and we wouldn’t defend the Cup that year.

One day in May, I was practicing with my seventeen-year-old brother, Patrick (who, while I wasn’t looking, had become the number-three junior in the country!), at Tony Palafox’s indoor club in Glen Cove, Long Island. I was playing with my trusty old Dunlop Maxply, and Patrick—at a point when most of the top players were shifting away from wood rackets—was using one of the new models, the composite Dunlop Max 200G.

About halfway through the practice, he cracked a couple of nice backhand returns by me. I motioned to his racket. “Let me try that,” I commanded, in the tone of voice that comes so easily to older brothers. He handed it to me. It felt comfortable right away, and I noticed an immediate improvement in my game: more oomph on my serve, more pop on the groundstrokes.

I took both of Patrick’s Max 200Gs with me down to Dallas to play the WCT Championships, where I beat Lendl in the final, continuing my roll against him and matching his power with a little of my own!

I beat him again in the semis at Wimbledon, in straight sets: a more one-sided victory than at Philadelphia or Dallas, but Ivan always did say he was allergic to grass. The semi on the other side of the draw was Kevin Curren against a young guy from New Zealand named Chris Lewis, who was having the tournament of his life. I actually worried about Curren—he was the Mark Philippoussis of the ’80s, with an unbelievable serve, very dangerous on grass.

However, Curren wasn’t the only thing I was worried about. Here’s where my head was then: I remember watching Kevin play Lewis, and thinking, “I’ve got to play Curren in the final, because he’s the tougher, more legitimate opponent, so if I lose to him it would be understandable.” Then I thought, “What are you, crazy? If you can play Chris Lewis, you’ve got an unbelievable chance to win this.”
Then
I thought, “Why was I even thinking about losing?” My self-doubts were still hanging around.

Somehow Lewis managed to beat Curren, and I took care of him handily in the final. It wasn’t one of my most glorious victories, but it was my second Wimbledon—and the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club finally gave me that coveted honorary membership!

Then I managed to lose to my nemesis (or one of them), Bill Scanlon, in the round of 16 at the U.S. Open. Yes, he played a great match, and yes, I was off that day, but that didn’t stop me from being extremely disappointed in myself.

I
N DECEMBER
I played the Australian Open for the first time. The tournament was still on grass in those days, in Melbourne’s venerable Kooyong Stadium, Harry Hopman’s old stomping grounds. In the past, traveling all that way for a comparatively minor major (if you will) had always felt like too much to me. However, the fact that guys like Vilas and Kriek had won it (twice apiece! On grass!) in the last few years goaded me. The field that year was strong—Lendl, Teltscher, Kriek; the up-and-coming Swedes Jarryd, Nystrom, and Wilander; and a hot young Aussie prospect named Pat Cash—but I felt I had a good chance to win the tournament. In fact, I felt I should win it.

The courts at Kooyong were a little odd: There was a slight uphill grade from baseline to net on each side, to facilitate drainage, and that tiny hill changed the usual grass-court equation ever so slightly, which allowed players like Kriek and Vilas to triumph over serve-and-volleyers.

And it was
hot:
December is the beginning of the Australian summer.

Those are my excuses.

I made it through to the semis without much difficulty. The day before my match against Wilander, I was practicing with Peter McNamara, who had had a horrific knee injury earlier in the year—the week after he had beaten Lendl in the finals at Brussels and going to number seven in the world. Peter was just starting to come back, but he was still limping pretty badly. I thought about how my ankle and shoulder had healed, and I had one of those there-but-for-the-grace-of-God moments: I thought, “Man, I am so lucky I’ve got my health—I’m going to win this thing!” I really thought my chances against Wilander on grass were excellent.

And then that night, somehow—it had to be psychosomatic—my knee went out on me! I wonder to this day: Was it really too much for me to relax and smell the roses for just that one moment? Did it feel like too big a deal to win the Australian my first time out?

In any case, the next morning I was panicking. I went to the trainer, who taped me up, but after splitting the first two sets with Wilander, I felt I wasn’t moving right, and I ripped all the tape off. It didn’t help. I lost in four sets, and Wilander killed Lendl in the final.

I had learned my lesson: Don’t relax. Not while you’re trying to stay on top of the world. Something changed for me at the end of that year—maybe the losses to Scanlon and Wilander woke me up; maybe I’d finally accepted that Borg wasn’t coming back. Maybe it was the fact that, after my mystery knee problem quickly cleared up, I was completely healthy for the first time in months. Whatever the reason, I realized that the months were slipping by and I wasn’t going to be young forever. I was about to turn twenty-five, middle-aged for a tennis player. It was time to seize the moment. Something in me clicked then, and I went into the new year ready to take on the world.

8

S
INCE
I
TRAVELED SO MUCH
, my parents always asked me to try to be home at Christmastime. I almost always obliged, and it usually cost me in the Masters, which followed shortly thereafter. The tournament was important to me, but I’d managed to win it only once, in ’79. My usual training regimen in mid-to-late December was as follows: I’d sit around and eat and drink and watch TV, and never pick up a racket. Meanwhile, Lendl was riding his bicycle up hills.

For five or six years, the organizers of the Australian Open had been trying to get me to come play, but I had always refused, saying I wouldn’t play a tournament that was held at Christmas. This year, though, the organizers had called my bluff and moved the event to earlier in the month, and I’d gone to the Australian instead of staying home and eating ice cream. I was back for Christmas, in far better shape than I had ever been in in December. I was playing great tennis, and I destroyed Lendl to win the ’84 Masters.

I noticed it from my first match in the Garden that year: My quickness and my serve-and-volley game were dictating play every time out. I was at the kind of level you dream about, thinking, “God, this is pretty close to the best I can play.” I’d finally taken my game to what felt like a notch above all my opponents’. It should have been great. I wish it had been. But it wasn’t.

It still felt hollow—I’d thought it would help straighten me out after my long grieving for Borg, but it wasn’t doing a thing for me inside. It reminded me of the story of King Midas: My success wasn’t translating into happiness.

Stella and I had been living together for close to two years in my coop at 90th and East End, and because she was a couple of years older than I was, I think she was feeling some pressure from her parents—perfectly nice, very traditional people who still lived in North Carolina—to formalize our relationship or move on. I was very fond of Stella, but—once again—I didn’t want to get married yet. I was looking to broaden my life, but I didn’t want to lose my tennis, either, and somehow it felt as if the formality of marriage would get in the way.

There was another thing. With all respect to Stella, I probably knew, deep inside, that we weren’t meant to be life partners. Maybe she knew that, too.

We decided to go our separate ways. To make it cleaner (and because I was earning a bit more money), I bought an incredible apartment at the top of a building on Central Park West—the very one in which I live today. It was a huge place for just me, but I think I realized in the back of my mind that I’d need a big nest for the family I wanted to have eventually.

Just after I moved across the park, I had a brief, slightly intense relationship with a very famous, very attractive older woman who lived nearby. Out of respect for her, I won’t mention her name. I’m bringing this up for a reason: not to boast, but to mention two things about her that made a big impression on me at the time. The first is that she had two children whom I liked very much: I was thinking a lot about children that year, wondering what it would be like to have them, and being around this small family stirred my imagination.

The second thing was her relative ease about her own renown. Maybe it was even a kind of exhibitionism. As the number-one tennis player in the world, I was exponentially more famous than I’d been as number two or three, but that part of the deal wasn’t giving me much pleasure. My new lady-friend was always eager to go out to whatever new restaurant happened to be in vogue at the moment, and the second she mentioned it, I would balk. I’d think,
That’s crazy! I can’t be seen with you.

I can’t tell you why I had a problem with being seen in public with an attractive, well-known woman. I don’t really know what I was thinking. At the time, though, it infected my whole being: I just didn’t want to be in the gossip columns as a couple, didn’t want to be photographed with her. That kind of thing has always bothered me, but it can be handled gracefully—in those days I just wasn’t up to it.

It was the same problem I had on the court: I couldn’t look at the lighter side. I hadn’t learned my lesson yet: If you’re going to be with a famous, beautiful woman, you have to pay the price. You can’t expect her to stay indoors all the time and make love to you whenever you want! It’s a two-way street. As it was, I was so turned off by the fact that she wanted us to be seen together that when I left for Europe that spring, I said, “I’ll call you when I get back”—and never did. I thought, “Forget it. She wants something from me.”

I guess twenty-five wasn’t such a mature age after all.

But I didn’t look back. I was on my way to Europe to play the French and go for my third Wimbledon. And this was my year—I knew it. I was playing so amazingly well that I thought no one could beat me, on any surface.

Not even Lendl. Not now.

I
T WAS THE WORST LOSS
of my life, a devastating defeat: Sometimes it still keeps me up nights. It’s even tough for me now to do the commentary at the French—I’ll often have one or two days when I literally feel sick to my stomach just at being there and thinking about that match. Thinking of what I threw away, and how different my life would’ve been if I’d won.

Connors had two Wimbledon titles and five U.S. Opens at that point, but he’d never won the French. Borg had won the French six times, and Wimbledon five—an unbelievable record!—but never the U.S. Open. Besides the Masters—which, because of the limited field, was a different kind of test than a regular tournament—Lendl had never won a major. Lendl choked away majors. Everyone knew that.

I had two Wimbledons and three Opens. A French title, followed by my third Wimbledon, would have given me that final, complete thing that I don’t have now—a legitimate claim as possibly the greatest player of all time.

Looking back, I try to see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty—otherwise I’d tear out what little hair I have left and work myself into a tizzy every day of my life, playing that match over and over again in my mind. I try not to do that, because, God knows, I’m an intense enough person as it is.

But I still do it anyway.

I can never escape that gnawing feeling: How badly did I want it? Not badly enough, obviously. Whatever the reason—friends, relationships, having a good time—when push came to shove, I couldn’t beat Ivan Lendl in the final of the French Open in the greatest year I ever had, the greatest year any tennis player had ever had. I blew a two-sets-to-love lead, but I could have sucked it up in the fifth set. Instead, I let it slip away; I just couldn’t find a way to muster up anything else.

It was a total disaster.

I get a feeling from time to time, when it seems that things are going too well, that something bad has to happen. Was I feeling that way before the ’84 French final? I’m not sure. After I won the first two sets, I could read the expressions of my friends in the stands: Their faces were saying, “This thing is over in a half-hour; there’s no way he can lose it.” To make a comparison to golf, it was like a gimme. And I blew the gimme. I blew a twelve-inch putt to win the Masters. That’s hard to live with.