The dreaded sleeping pills had a part to play in the 1990 Wimbledon final that got away. My draw was moderately tough, as I came up against Pat Cash again, this time in the fourth round. It was very early for two title contenders to meet. It was partly due to the fact that we only had 16 seeds then.
Today’s system, in which 32 players are seeded in a draw of 128, was introduced in 2000, the year after I retired as a player. In some ways it’s good, but I’m not a fan of it. There are a lot more boring early round matches than there were before. Nowadays the top guys often win 6-1, 6-2, 6-3 up to the middle weekend, which I don’t think helps anyone – it’s not great for viewers, the ratings aren’t great, and there are fewer stories in the first week. Yes, you have two more matches – instead of players having to play five to win the title you have seven, so you can sell more tickets, and you get your marquee names into the latter stages, but quality-wise it’s a step down. By contrast, with 16 seeds we’d have a few matches in the first week that were challenging. I’d be happy to cut the majors down to a 64-player draw to make the tournaments shorter.
One thing that hasn’t changed since then is that you only have a handful of people who could play on grass, irrespective of the rankings. And Pat was one of them. He claimed to be the best on grass on his best day, certainly grass was always his favourite surface, and he was someone nobody liked to play at Wimbledon. I knew that the majority of the baseliners I played weren’t going to beat me, but Pat was a threat. Because of our antipathy from two years earlier, the match was once again hyped, but I beat him in straight sets, and followed it up by beating Brad Gilbert, also in straight sets.
I reached the final by beating Goran Ivanišević in four sets – the third of which by the most unlikely score of 6-0. Goran’s biggest demon was always himself, and I’m so happy for him that he actually won Wimbledon at the end of his career. It would not have made sense for a guy with such a natural instinct on grass, with one of the greatest lefty serves of all time, perhaps the greatest, not to have won Wimbledon. In fact it would have been insane, but because of his mental fragility it was possible. And in a tiebreaker I felt I could use a bit of sportsmanship and a bit of cleverness to challenge him mentally. It worked most of the time, and having got back into the match by taking the second set on the tiebreak, I then ran away with the third. For him to lose on grass 6-0 with his serve ought to have been impossible.
The final was different on many levels to 1988, because Stefan was by now a proper competitor for No. 1. We’d had battles, and it was no surprise that we were both in the final. I knew from the start that this was going to be a 50:50 match, whereas in 1988 I was a clear-cut favourite. I had another slow start. I don’t remember when I took the last sleeping pill, but it was already light outside, and I really struggled to get to the courts on time – I feel the need to apologise to the spectators watching, it was crazy. So it was no surprise that I went 6-2, 6-2 down, but I felt the longer the match went the better I got. I got back to two sets all, and I was up 3-1 in the fifth set. I don’t think I had ever lost a match when I was a break up in the fifth set. But I did that day.
I was serving at 3-1, and I missed a forehand volley at 30-15. I missed it because I had a soft hand. I went back to the baseline after that point, and I thought ‘Hmm, I’m nervous now.’ I wasn’t used to that, I was seldom nervous, but I was then, perhaps for the first time in a big final. I wasn’t ashamed of it, but I was aware that this was something new. And I went on to lose the final set 6-4.
To lose in a Wimbledon final from being a break up in the fifth set, to be so close to winning my fourth Wimbledon, was heartbreaking, but I need to say something about losing. The longer you play tennis the more you understand that winning and losing go together. It isn’t a one-way street where you win all the time – you have players who lose a lot more than they win, but they still have to be respected. When you’re younger, innocence helps you – the fact that you feel unbeatable, the strongest kid in town, means you just don’t think of losing, but the older you get the more matches you play and you lose more, and you understand that it’s part of the package. The 1990 Wimbledon final, tough though it was, didn’t destroy me. Going into the match I knew it was going to be a battle, and on the day I lost. You should always be competitive, but you should never get too down with losing or too high with winning, because the margin between them can be very small.
Those who remember me at Wimbledon in 1991 probably remember a tortured soul. People say I could barely string a coherent sentence together, and if they remember that, they have good reason. I was an emotional wreck by then. I was confused; I was losing my mind. To work out the reasons why, you have to go back 18 months to the start of 1990.
By the end of 1989 I was already taking stock on my career. I’d won a third Wimbledon title, I’d won my first US Open, and we’d defended our Davis Cup title. One thing I had never done, however, was to finish a year as No. 1, so I decided in the new year to really go for it. I entered lots of tournaments, but I had what seemed like a shadow: Stefan Edberg. The guy read me! He entered the same tournaments, I won three finals out of four against him, but he was still ahead of me in the rankings. The fourth of those finals was in Paris Bercy, one of the last tournaments of the year. I was struggling more than him physically, I pulled a thigh muscle at 3-3 in the first set and had to retire. He therefore went to the ATP World Championship (the old Masters which that year had moved from Madison Square Garden in New York to the Festhalle (festival hall) in Frankfurt), ranked No. 1, with me at No. 2.
After the Paris final I phoned my trusted doctor Hans-Wilhelm Müller Wohlfahrt in Munich, and asked him what I had to do to be ready for Frankfurt eight days later. The guy said ‘Listen Boris, you can’t play.’ I told him that wasn’t an option for me, I had spent the whole year aiming to finish No. 1, and I wasn’t going to refuse to jump the last fence – I had to play. He heard me and said he’d do his best, but he said I couldn’t practise, as he had to do four treatments, one every second day. The treatment took eight days, and I couldn’t play tennis during the treatment. I flew from Paris to Munich on the Sunday night for the first treatment. He then flew with me to Frankfurt, the last treatment was on the Monday, my first match was on the Tuesday, and I went into it without hitting a tennis ball since Bercy.
By some miracle I won my round robin matches, including beating Lendl in the last of them to send him packing. But Stefan won all his matches too. So you had a semi-final line-up of Edberg playing Sampras, followed by me against Agassi. The problem was that if Edberg beat Sampras, he’d be guaranteed the year-end No. 1 ranking. And he did, at which point my motivation disappeared, and Agassi crushed me.
At that point I did something I’d never done before – I skipped a press conference, for which I was fined around $1,000, and decided to walk back to my hotel. This was the middle of November, it was pouring with rain, and I was still in my shorts and tracksuit top. There was an official courtesy car, but I’d told the driver not to pick me up. So he drove just behind me while I walked, utterly frustrated, back to the hotel. It was like a scene from some film noir. You couldn’t talk to me, I was in too much pain.