You Cannot Be Serious by John McEnroe;James Kaplan Page B

must say that my bemusement had a lot to do with the fact that I’d simply never played in front of so many fans before. I should also say that today, after so many years of going to Wimbledon, I’ve come to cherish the Brits’ passion about this great national institution. The English may be reserved, but not when it comes to their games!
    Between the line calls and Dent’s tenacity, I lost my way a little bit, and I soon found myself down two sets to one, and two games to love in the fourth. It was definitely a tight spot, but then I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts. It had been a magical ride for me so far at Wimbledon, and I just didn’t think it should end here, against this opponent.
    I remembered how the shoe had been on the other foot at the French: I’d been up two sets to one and a break against Dent when he’d turned it around and won the match. What had happened then? I’d thought about the stakes of being in my first Grand Slam singles tournament; I had gotten tight and I’d folded.
    The same thing could happen to Dent here, I reasoned. Moving on to his first Wimbledon semifinal at twenty-seven would be a huge deal for him: He, too, could get tight. If I just stuck with it, I might be able to turn this match around.
    There was another reason I wanted to win. This was a crossroads: If I lost, I would still be able to enter the Wimbledon juniors; if I won and went on to the semis of the main draw, I wouldn’t have time to enter the juniors. This was my mind-set: If I lost to Dent, I’d lost in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon—a great result for an eighteen-year-old qualifier. But if then I went over and lost to somebody in the third round of the juniors— that result was stained.
    Meanwhile, it had turned into a really exciting match. The crowd seemed to get more vocal with each passing minute. They went from their second-set bemusement—“Who the hell is this guy?”—to a kind of incredulous, “This bloke is actually intending to win!” They were more against me than ever, but that day, in that match, it felt just fine.
    And I think Dent got peeved. Suddenly, I was a different human being than the one he had seen just three weeks before at the French. What monster had he created? Suddenly the punk kid was questioning calls, kicking his racket. By the fifth set, it was edgy out there between us.
    One service break was all it took. I won the last set, 6–4, and when I went to the net to shake hands, Dent barely looked me in the eye.
    I was eighteen years old, in the semifinals of Wimbledon.
    It felt, at the same time, both totally unbelievable and like the most natural thing in the world.
     
     
     
    T HE SEMIFINAL MATCHUPS that year were Bjorn Borg against Vitas Gerulaitis, and Jimmy Connors against…me. Me! I remember walking into the Gloucester Hotel, the big players’ hotel at the time, and seeing the odds posted on a chalkboard (everyone bets in London): “Borg, 2–to–1; Connors, 3–to–1; Gerulaitis, 7–to–1; McEnroe, 250–to–1.” Two hundred and fifty–to–one didn’t faze me. Just being in that group felt like, “Man, this is the big time.”
    From that point on, my life would be totally different. (Just for starters, I would never play another junior tournament.)
    But it wasn’t just that this was the pros. Suddenly, I was in a whole new level of the game. Borg, Connors—these guys were the gods of tennis to me, guys I’d watched on TV! Connors had won Wimbledon in ’74 and been in the finals against Ashe in ’75. Borg had won in ’76. These were two Wimbledon champions. The real deal.
    Vitas, at number four in the world, was no slouch, either. He would go on to win the Australian Open later that year.
    Going into a match against Jimmy Connors wasn’t like going up against any of the pros I’d played before. This man was a legitimately great player. I had sat in the crowd when he’d played Rosewall—himself one of the greats—on the grass at Forest