The first tennis match I remember watching start-to-finish was the 1985 Wimbledon Final, Boris Becker vs. Kevin Curren. I had watched parts of a few matches that fortnight (yes, fortnight), had seen enough of the 17-year-old Becker to be intrigued, and decided that I wanted to enjoy that 'Breakfast at Wimbledon' thing. I slept outside the night before (this was before the bears migrated to Armstrong County), woke up early, then hit tennis balls against the neighbor's barn with an old racquet. I was settled in and excited by 9 am. Becker won his first Grand Slam, as you probably guessed, since almost none of you have ever heard of Kevin Curren.
I liked Becker, but somehow, Ivan Lendl became my first favorite tennis player. In retrospect, I kind of wish that I had fallen for Becker or John McEnroe or Stefan Edberg, or even Michael Stich, somebody with a great net game, somebody who could have inspired me to get away from the baseline and expand my game a little bit.
The 2016 Australian Open begins in a few days, and I'll be watching a lot of it, but tennis has changed so goddamned much since that Sunday morning in 1985. Racquet technology (and weight training/fitness/nutrition) makes the sport of 30 or 40 years ago seem almost quaint by today's standards. Tennis in the mid-to-late-'80s was starting to transition to a power game, but the best players of that era, playing with those racquets, wouldn't have a prayer against Novak Djokovic. There was still room in the sport for the finesse guys.
I miss the days of serve-and-volley tennis, even tho I could never do it very well myself. Some of those guys were artists.
1987 US Open Quarterfinal
#1 Ivan Lendl vs. #8 John McEnroe
Louis Armstrong Stadium, Flushing, New York
USA Network
Broadcasters: Ted Robinson, Barry MacKay, and Mary Carillo
It's a late-summer night with a lot of buzz and anticipation. McEnroe leads the all-time series, 14-12. The afternoon session ran long, so this match has a late start, and the crowd takes a long time to settle in. There are several delays thru-out the first set as fans try to find seats in the 18,000-capacity stadium.
Lendl is at the top of his game in 1987. McEnroe is on the wane, before he hits a late-career resurgence a few years later. I didn't really start to appreciate McEnroe until his great US Open run in 1990, when he lost to a young Pete Sampras in the semis. So, if I watched this match, I would have been rooting for Lendl.
McEnroe and Lendl trade service games for a while, with a little bit of brilliance here and there. In the fourth game, McEnroe hits a sharp-angled volley that Lendl runs down and puts deep in the court, but McEnroe's response is even better. But Lendl hit three aces that game, so it didn't matter much. In the next game, Lendl hits a brilliant topspin lob, and McEnroe double-faults three times to lose serve. Then Lendl hits another topspin lob for a winner, and he holds at love.
And that's pretty much it. Lendl wins four straight service games at love, and McEnroe never looks like he has a chance. He bickers with the umpire a little bit, which reminds me why I wasn't a fan of his until late in his career. But mostly he just looks resigned. He knows that Lendl is just too good for him. Whenever Mac serve-and-volleys, Lendl rips a return winner right past him. If he chips Lendl's serve and tries to follow it into the net, Lendl hits a topspin lob over him. Carillo sadly notes that McEnroe had switched to a slightly bigger and more powerful racquet the week before the tournament started so that he could keep up with the pace of players like Lendl.
So, the players, styles, atmosphere, etc., were promising, but this turned into a dud of a match. Lendl won easily, 6-3, 6-3, 6-4.
Still, there was a lot to take out of this. Most importantly for me, I just love watching McEnroe's serve. That might be one of my favorite sights in sports, right up there with Griffey's swing. Feet parallel with the baseline, spread far apart. Long, deliberate backswing. High toss. Deep back arch. That thing is just beautiful, even tho Carillo mentioned that in 1987 he had shortened his service motion a little bit, probably due to back problems. I can't believe that he had such a long career with that serve. It's amazing that he wasn't injured more often. My back hurts just watching it.
Lendl had a big looping forehand. My forehand actually looked very similar to his. The difference was that Lendl was a world-class athlete with amazing reflexes, whereas I could get jammed if you hit a hard, flat serve right at my body.
All of Lendl's little quirks were on display here. He kept sawdust in his pocket, which he used to rub onto his grip before serving. There were dozens of varieties of grip tape available by then, but he stuck with the leather grip/sawdust routine. Fucking weirdo.
Lendl was the first guy I remember hearing about who replicated match conditions/string tension in practice. I.e., he would practice with new balls and new strings for a set amount of time, then switch to a different racquet with new strings at the next ball change, just as he would in a match. This seems to be more common now, but it just sounds so wasteful. (If I had my racquets restrung every three or four months, I thought that that was a luxury.)
Also, his practice court at his Greenwich, CT, home had the same surface as the Louis Armstrong court. Whenever Armstrong was resurfaced, he had the same company resurface his court exactly the same way.
And here's the kicker. At one point, he mildly disagreed with a call, shrugged, plucked out a couple of eyelashes, and then looked completely composed again. Carillo went on about his eyelash-plucking. This has always been an unconscious nervous tic of mine, and I never heard of anybody else doing it. I certainly didn't know that Lendl did it, but apparently it was a thing. If you're going to mimic a great athlete, there are surely more attractive things that you can do.
Mac wore a diamond ear ring in his left ear. 1987! And I had forgotten about how he dried his hair, by stiffly holding out both arms and tilting his head into his short sleeves. This was in the days before players had to dry off with a towel between every. single. fucking. point. It made for much faster matches.
Okay, now I'm going to watch Stefan Edberg, the prettiest of them all.