his forehand, I could start doing damage because the flow of play almost demanded that he go crosscourt —bringing one of my best weapons, the running forehand, into play. That gave Andre something to fret about, because I could make him move with my forehand, and he wasn’t an exceptional mover. I also sought to get into forehand rallies with Andre. Those were athletic hitting contests in which I felt I had an edge, however marginal. On my service games, I liked to mix it up, especially on the ad side. I loved going down the middle with the big serve—my strength to his (the forehand). But Andre was such a good returner that I could only pull that off if I established the wide serve early on, just to keep him off balance. Andre was such a great hitter that I was constantly forced to mix it up—go for the second serve out wide to his forehand, or just put a little something extra on the ball. Late in our rivalry, I started to serve and volley more often on the second serve. He was a tough guy to chip and charge, but I did a little of that, too. I threw in lots of double faults when I played Andre, because he forced me to try to execute at the very edge of my comfort zone. When I volleyed against Andre, I felt that if I could get the racket on the ball, I would be okay. I liked my chances if I could poke the ball deep to a corner, or even hit a drop volley. I never felt Andre’s defense was that great. If I got him running to a corner, or changing directions, I felt I had him. The big danger was hitting a second serve only to see Andre get that return down low, to force a defensive volley. You just didn’t want to mess with Andre’s passing shots. The overarching theme, in my eyes, was that if I could make it a test of athleticism and movement, things would break my way. I had the fast-twitch-muscle advantage. By contrast, Andre had amazing eyehand coordination; he was unrivaled as a ball striker. The idea was always the same: avoid becoming the puppet on the end of Andre’s string. Avoid getting into those rallies in which I found myself trying to get the ball to Andre’s backhand, while he’s cracking forehands and jerking me around the court. We had a tremendous crowd for our big quarterfinal in Flushing Meadows. Word must have gone out all over Wall Street, the Upper East Side, and Central Park West that this was a potential classic, for all the scenemakers, movers and shakers, and celebrities were out. The best thing was that you could feel this respect and appreciation for tennis in the air. It wasn’t the usual noisy New York crowd, being semiattentive. Everyone seemed riveted and there were moments when you could have heard a pin drop. Andre and I gave them their money’s worth—this was a battle pitting the best serve-and-volleyer against the best returner and passer. It was different from our final of 1995, because I attacked more—in fact, I attacked relentlessly. I think I served and volleyed on every single service point I played for more than three straight hours. That takes its toll; that constant stopping and starting, leaping and lunging, sudden directional changes, and bending low can be debilitating. That match also represented the longest period of time over which Andre and I both played really well at the same time. We each had our little lulls and hiccups, but nobody lost serve for more than three hours. I had chances to break Andre in the first set, but I blew it. I lost the first tiebreaker, but I came back to win the next three. It was a blunt and sometimes brutal battle that was decided most of all by execution and mental focus, rather than strategy or the way our strokes matched up. In a way, that high point of our rivalry was also a microcosm of our decade-long battle. I held a six-win edge in our rivalry (20–14), although if Andre had not taken significant breaks from the game we might have played fifty times. I performed a little better in the majors, holding a 6–3 edge. He won all of our clashes at the Australian and French opens; I won all the ones we played at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. We met in five major finals, and I won on every occasion but one, the Australian Open of 1995. We had a few epics. In the long run, I was just a little better at those giant moments, just like I was on that sultry New York
night when Andre and I played our masterpiece.
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A CHAMPION’S MIND
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Introduction Chapter 1 1971-1986 Th
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A few years ago, the idea of writin
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A CHAMPION’S MIND
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cheap to build and easy to maintain
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other serious player in the family.
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specialist. Eventually, I also had
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that enabled me to use the same bas
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my training. Cha-ching, cha-ching .
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It didn’t hurt my cause that as c
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My journey to tennis stardom was a
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He had fought his way through the p
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He was courteous, and curious about
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seemed that my serve was getting st
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Andre was bouncing the ball, gettin
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The kids had a “normal” late ad
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Although I missed the Australian Op
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I know what the problem was: theore
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player in the nation. I was the ide
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had I not changed my receiving stan
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of reading between the lines, and T
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The tie worked out exactly as plann
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him to chip and charge. I would wai
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that you can’t wait to get out th
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developed on hard courts, where you
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established icon. We had a tug-of-w
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the people there laughed—somewhat
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way I also took out solid clay-cour
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danger of turning tennis into a sch
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myself, I fought like mad. The New
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inexplicably collapsed. By then Tim
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the eyes lighting up and his lips t
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After that match with Jim, I often
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