With McEnroe taking a sabbatical and Connors having lost early, I felt very confident from the semis onwards. I was playing Henri Leconte, who I knew well and had beaten the previous year. I dropped the third set against him on the tiebreak, but I was feeling so good after the first two sets against Henri. I had to show him first that I was here to win, because the longer we played the better he got and those first two sets were crucial. It meant I could afford to lose the third and still be OK, and I wrapped it up comfortably in the fourth.

The victory put me into the final against Ivan Lendl. Most of the focus was on him. He had won the French and US Opens, but this was the one he wanted. He was world No. 1, he’d just won the French Open, and he was doing everything that was humanly possible to become the champion of Wimbledon.

That was his agenda, but I had mine. I felt that the final was a big chance for me to truly establish myself as a top tennis player. I knew even then that I had to win to show it hadn’t been an accident the previous year. Up to the final, I was in a tunnel – my only thought was ‘who’s next?’ – but when it comes to the final you begin to think a bit more. And I realised this was the day I had to do it. Winning the final would give me peace of mind. It would give me a proper belief and understanding that I’m one of the best tennis players in the world, that I can trust myself no matter what, that I can cope with pressure, and I’m here to stay around for a long time.

For some reason, on grass and in Slams, I felt good against Ivan. He was serving and volleying all the time, which wasn’t his natural game, and his backhand return wasn’t so good, so I had a target to aim for, which gave me a bit of a safety net. And in this final I was the more experienced – I may have been eight years younger than him, but I’d won a Wimbledon title and this was his first final.

The first two sets were all me. I broke him in each set and after barely an hour I was two sets up. But then he came back in the third when my level dropped. He should have won the third set – he was 4-1 up in games, and had three set points at 0-40 on my serve at 4-5. I expected him to win the third set, I was fully prepared to play four sets, and for that reason I kept coming to the net. I knew that’s how I had to play, regardless of the score, and my attitude of not being afraid made him uncomfortable. I saved the set points, and when I got back to 5-5 there was a switch of momentum. He backed off a bit, I pushed forward, and I broke him for 6-5.

So here, a year after my nervous final game against Curren, I was serving for a victory that would be less of a shock but would be worth more to me. And on the second point of that final game, I had a chance to stamp my mark on Wimbledon’s history. I served out wide to the backhand, came to the net, and volleyed his return into the forehand corner. He raced across his baseline and went for a forehand passing shot down the line. I dived for it, but it hit the tape and dropped over. At the moment it hit the net cord I was airborne and horizontal. The fact that the ball dropped over should have finished me, but it dropped close enough to me that I could play a crosscourt winner into the open court while still on the ground. I was so elated I did my shuffle and gestured in triumph with my arms. A couple of minutes later I served out the victory. It was one of the top three matches of my entire playing career.

That relief, that celebration, that joy was by far the biggest I’ve had in my life. It was by far the most emotional I’ve been, but in a very quiet way.

I think I can honestly say that every big match I had after that, every very important tennis match, every crossroads, every identity crisis – I would always look back to Wimbledon 1986 and say ‘If I can do that at 18, I can do it at 25, 27, whenever. When push came to shove, I didn’t run away.’ That was the red line of understanding throughout my tennis career and probably afterwards – I can trust myself.