So when people moan about the rain at Wimbledon, I thank my lucky stars for the timing of Saturday’s rain. I can honestly say I would have lost to Lendl if the rain hadn’t interrupted the match and allowed me to get my senses back. Overall, my level at Wimbledon in 1989 was very close to my level in 1986, which I think of as my best tennis year. But in 1989 it wasn’t just my serve that was good – my returns, my volleys, my footwork, and how I approached matches tactically were better than ever before. Yet I still needed that bit of luck on the day I was mentally vulnerable. These are the fine margins that tennis watchers don’t always appreciate.

There are a couple of footnotes to Wimbledon 1989 that are worth mentioning. In my second round match against Richard Matuszewski, I was warned for breaking the all-white clothing rule. I’ve talked about how important it is to me that I am true to myself, and part of my character – at least at that time – was that nobody was going to tell me what to wear. I knew that the clothing rule at Wimbledon was mostly white, but I was suddenly seized by a wish to choose just how white it was going to be. I began the match wearing my white shirt, but in my bag I had a mainly white shirt with a lot of green and blue stripes. In the third set, with the match going very well for me, the devil inside me said ‘They’re not going to throw me off the court if I’m leading in the third set,’ so I put on the striped shirt. And of course afterwards I was asked not to wear that shirt again. That’s fine, I got the message; I’d just wanted to test the boundaries. I knew I was doing it, and I accept it now as a reflection of who I was then, even though I’ve grown up a lot since. Nowadays the same thing wouldn’t happen because the top players have their clothing lines that are approved by the club well before Wimbledon begins, so they don’t have the shirts in their bag to make the kind of choice I made.

The other footnote concerns my winnings. I never normally picked up my prize money myself, but for some reason in 1989 I did. I was in my tracksuit after the final, I was given the cheque, so I put it in my pocket – OK, it was for nearly £200,000, but where else was I going to put it? I then forgot all about it, until next day I was asked where the cheque was. I’m not even sure that I knew what a cheque was. We looked for it but couldn’t find it; at one stage we feared it had been stolen. We then asked my mother, and she found it in my tracksuit trousers when she was doing my laundry. I remembered that, in the intensity of the time after the final, my mother wanted to be my mother again, and she said ‘Son, give me your laundry, I’ll do your washing for you.’ The problem was she had washed it, so we had to ask Wimbledon for another cheque to present to the bank!

The period from mid-1988 to mid-1991 was my most consistent on all surfaces. It didn’t mean I won Wimbledon every year, but I was number one or two in the rankings, first battling with Ivan Lendl, then with Stefan Edberg. And having won my third Wimbledon title, I went on to complete an achievement that was equally special for me.

Wimbledon was always the ultimate prize, but having won it at 17 and 18, I was very keen to show I wasn’t just a grass court player. My results on the tour on hard courts, clay and indoor carpet showed that I could play on all surfaces, but I felt I needed to win at least one of the other three Slams to prove myself. I finally made it in September 1989 when I won the US Open. Again, the underestimated nature of surviving seven matches in a fortnight needs to be stressed. On a humid New York day, I was two sets down in the second round against Derrick Rostagno, and two match points down in the fourth set tiebreaker, but I survived. On Rostagno’s second match point, I hit a running crosscourt forehand that hit the top of the net and dropped in. That broke his spirit and I ran away with the fifth set, but that’s how close I came to losing in the second round of the one US Open I managed to win. I dropped sets in the third and fourth rounds, but from then I was OK, and in the final I beat Lendl in four sets to join that rare club of players who have won majors on two different surfaces.