BACKSPIN TIME CAPSULE: 1987 Wimbledon

A would-be star whose career prospects would forever be hampered either by destructively raging emotions or a succession of injuries that never allowed him to fully explore the possibilties of his talent brilliantly putting all his natural gifts together for one two-week stretch versus an established champion with a stoic and/or so-called boring persona in comparison to his flashier opponents attempting to claim the final elusive piece of tennis hardware which would at once both silence his critics and secure a leading place in the sport's history.

At its heart, that was the match-up in the 1987 Wimbledon final between Pat Cash and Ivan Lendl.

22-year old Australian Cash was a former Wimbledon boys champ and #1-ranked junior in the world, but a succession of injuries had prevented him from ever living up to his early potential. For one twelve-month period, though, he came close. From January '87 to January '88, he reached three out of five slam finals (Wimbledon was the second in the stretch). Thing is, when he played all four slam events in '87 it turned out to be the only time after his 19th birthday that he managed to do it in a career that saw him play his last slam match at age 32. Czechoslovakia's Lendl, on the other hand, reached EIGHT consecutive U.S. Open finals, lifted three of the four men's title cups (taking multiple titles at each), won nearly one hundred tour titles and spent 270 weeks at #1. But his career-long difficulties on grass courts forever left him underrated by many, as his perceived failure in London overshadowed his success everywhere else, and his off-putting persona and "boring" game (remember, he was playing in an era when personality-plus people named McEnroe and Connors led the way) resulted in Sports Illustrated placing him on the cover under the headline "The Champion That Nobody Cares About."



On that July afternoon at the All-England Club, the historical perception of one's career was set to change forever.



July 5, 1987 - "The Czech was Bounced by Cash"

This was a match that was heartbreaking for one man while it was a dream come true for another. Patrick Hart Cash, Jr., 22, the Aussie who admits he would rather lie on the beach, drink, get a tan and weigh 270 pounds defeated Ivan Lendl for his first Wimbledon championship 7-6(5)/6-2/7-5.

Even though Cash lost only one set in the fortnight this victory would have to be considered something of a comeback. On June 24, 1985 he was ranked #7 in the world, but he began to have back problems and eventually would be out of action for seven months after surgery on a herniated disk. He then had an emergency appendectomy seventeen days before last year's Wimbledon. With his world ranking having plummeted to #413, he accepted a wild card entry into the '86 Championships that was offered mainly because of his popularity with the London punk rocker girls who screamed at every move he made. He ended up making the quarterfinals before his legs tired.



Before this fortnight, Pat Cash was known chiefly for his temper (even though he had made the Wimbledon semis in 1984 and lost the final of the Australian Open in January) and being severely criticized by former Aussie players and the Australian press for his antics on the court that were so different from the reserved champions from Down Under in the past. He was so angry at the '84 U.S. Open that he threw his racket into the crowd and then claimed that he was just tossing it to a fan. And even though he says he matured during his long absence from the game, he threw a punch at a TV cameraman after a Davis Cup practice in December. What can you expect from a man who says his favorite tennis player has always been John McEnroe?

Cash's remarks about women's tennis following the French Open lost him many of his young fans, so he advanced through the rounds this year without much fanfare. He reportedly called the women's game "rubbish," and "overpaid junk" and wondered aloud why anyone would bother to watch it. He has since said he was misquoted. But, by then, the damage has already been done.

No matter how people feel about Cash, you have to commend him for his performance here. He kept his temper under control and played the tournament of his life. In winning he became only the second Wimbledon junior champ (Bjorn Borg is the other) to win the Gentlemen's crown, and the first Australian man to win the title since John Newcombe in 1971. He was also the first Aussie man to win a slam event of any kind since Mark Edmondson won the Australian Open in 1976.

The 1st set was on serve at 6-6. Cash had breezed through his service games, while Lendl had struggled. Cash took a 6-1 lead in the tie-break, and went on to win it 7-5 to claim the set. In the 2nd set, Cash broke Lendl in game #3, then again in #5 after Lendl double-faulted three times. The Czech slammed down his racket after he had a second DF in a row. Cash was up 4-1. He won the 2nd at 6-2, but the most amazing fact was that he allowed Lendl zero points on his serve in the entire set.

In game #4 of the 3rd set, Lendl had his first break point opportunity of the by-then two-hour long match. He locked away the break and eventually took 4-1 and 5-3 leads. But in game #9, Lendl once again double-faulted, this time on break point, and it was 5-4. Cash would get a break once again two games later, then easily held his own serve at love to claim the set at 7-5 and take the title. He raised his arms in triumph after a brilliant performance.



But then Cash broke Wimbledon tradition, as you could expect from a man with a diamond stud in his ear. He immediately ran off Centre Court and into the stands. He climbed up ten rows and over the television booth, into the friends box, to share his victory with the people closest to him. The first person he hugged was his dad, Pat Sr., and it was a truly touching moment. To coach Ian Barclay, he said, "We f---ing showed them."

"To be honest, holding the cup up to photographers wasn't what I wanted to do then. I just wanted to get off the court and see the people that meant the most to me." - Cash

Through all of this, Lendl, 27, had to sit and watch and ponder another loss in a Wimbledon final, his second in a row. He lost to Boris Becker in three sets last year, and vowed that he would win in '87. He played well this time around, and when two-time defending champ Becker was stunned by Peter Doohan in the 2nd Round it seemed as if this would be the year he would do it. But it wasn't meant to be, as he ran into a steamroller named Cash. Lendl has yet to win a major tournament on grass and today he once again showed that even though he is the #1 player in the world he is just an above average player on grass, as his "manufactured" grass court game was totally outclassed by Cash's more natural moves. Lendl has gone through this type of adversity before -- it took him four slam final losses before he won his first three years ago in Paris -- and it seems as if it's happening all over again at Wimbledon. Whether it be his personality or his failure to win big matches there always seems to be something in his way that prevents him from being what he CAN be -- one of the greatest players of all time.

"I believe at presentations the second one shouldn't be there. He should just be allowed to leave. It's a miserable feeling." - Lendl

Lendl made the Wimbledon semis in '83 and '84, then the final the last two seasons, and is making slow but steady progress on the grass. He so desperately wants to win here because he feels that he must in order to be considered one of the best in the game's history. But, as Lendl notes, "(Ken) Rosewall didn't win here, but everyone would agree that he was a great." He offered to give up every other match win in 1987 for a victory at Wimbledon. He says he will "win it or die first," and you can believe that he will push himself even more next year than he did the last to achieve his lofty dream.



But even though you can feel sorry for Lendl, you can also feel good for Cash. For he deserved to be the Wimbledon champion this year. No doubt about it.



...Cash, who lost a single set while winning the Wimbledon title, is still remembered for his famous checkered headband and groundbreaking climb into the stands. It's become tennis' version of the Gatorade bucket dump that originated with the New York Giants' Super Bowl run around the same period, and both have become victorious traditions in the twenty-plus years since. Both were born in spur-of-the-moment fits of jubilation, but now seem rote, obligatory and often tired, going-through-the-motions celebrations (Schiavone at Roland Garros being a rare exception.) I suppose those climbs will continue forever... or at least until a player falls and breaks a leg/separates a shoulder en route to the friends box.



As far as his actual tennis accomplishments, Cash's junior career was sterling. He was the world #1 and the Boys runner-up at the Australian Open in 1981, then won both junior slams at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in '82. Aside from his '87 Wimbledon final, his other two slam final appearances both came at the Australian Open in 1987 and '88, the former the last time the event was played on grass courts and the latter the first at the current Melbourne Park hard court site. Both were five-set losses, to Stefan Edberg in '87 and Mats Wilander a year later in an 8-6 final set that was (and still is) the longest in a Men's final in Oz since Rod Laver defeated Neale Fraser in another 8-6 final set in 1960. That same match was the first grand slam final contested indoors, as well, when the stadium roof was closed during the match because of rain.

Cash reached a career-high of #4 during the '88 season, but he only finished in the year-end Top 10 twice ('84 & '87) in his career. After reaching the QF during his Wimbledon title defense in '88, he never advanced that far in a slam again. Due to a succession of injuries that included the aforementioned back injury, knee problems and an Achilles' tendon tear, Cash's career will forever be one riddled with "what if's." He only won seven singles titles during his career, the last coming in 1990. After Wimbledon in '88, Cash was able to appear in only thirteen more slams until he retired for good in 1997. His final slam match came at Wimbledon that season, ten years after his career had reached its ultimate zenith. He suffered a 1st Round loss.

Since his career ended, Cash has lived mostly in London. He has been a coach, a television commentator (always opinionated, and usually ruffling feathers), a rock musician, and even was the tennis instructor for actors Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany during the filming of the "Wimbledon" movie.

Cash may have been a Wimbledon champion, but Lendl's career surpassed the Aussie's by miles and miles.

The Czech-born Lendl won eight career slams, played in nineteen slam finals (at least one in eleven consecutive seasons from 1981-91), won 94 tour singles titles (second all-time), reached ten consecutive slam SF from 1985-88 (behind only Federer's just-ended string of twenty-three), won forty-four straight matches in 1981-82 (second to Guillermo Vilas' record of 46), appeared in nine consecutive Masters Cup finals (winning five), was ranked #1 for a then-record 270 weeks and retired as the all-time leader in career earnings.

Lendl is still alive and well, but in spite of his "win it or die first" promise, he never did win Wimbledon. After at first being put off-balance by the bad bounces (on the softer and more worn lawns compared to the more-true All-England Club lawns of today) of grass courts, his less-than-natural volleys, sometimes-inconsistent (though often big) serve and his own inclination to resent the surface (he said it was for cows, and alleged that he was allergic to grass -- then was seen soon after playing golf), Lendl worked hard to make himself a good grass court player. He even skipped Roland Garros twice in order to get extra practice time in preparation for the grass season. But there was always someone better than him at SW19... and usually ONLY one. From 1983-90, Lendl was defeated five times by the eventual champion. After his back-to-back finals in '86-'87, he reached the semis from '88-'90, but lost each year to either Boris Becker (twice) or Edberg as that duo faced off in three consecutive finals (I did a "Time Capsule" on their third meeting, by the way).

Unfortunately, that bad luck of the draw has served to help make Lendl one of the more forgotten great players of the past twenty-five years. He was never as brash and/or entertaining as Connors or McEnroe, nor as engaging/exciting as Becker, and he probably-unfairly developed a reputation for coming up short in big matches. Even arguably his most famous victory, in the '84 Roland Garros final, is known more for the fact that McEnroe lost a two sets to none lead on the only surface on which the American never won a slam rather than for the fact that Lendl came back from 0-2 down to claim his first slam title after going winless in his first four attempts. No matter that his big-hitting baseline game and training techniques paved the way for the generation of players that followed, he was destined to pale in comparison to the bigger "stars" in the sport even while he was the dominant figure on tour. If he'd been able to complete a career grand slam by winning Wimbledon he might have been able to outlive and outrun those comparisons and win out over them in the end, but it never quite happened for him. He finally retired due to back problems in 1994.

Lendl was elected to the Tennis Hall of Fame in 2001. Cash has not been, and likely never will be... but the imitation-is-the-most-sincere-form-of-flattery reminders of his climb into the Centre Court stands, replicated at the conclusion of nearly every slam final, continues to stand as one of the coolest of sports legacies, don't you think?

And that, plus a Wimbledon title, ain't so bad.



*WIMBLEDON TITLES - AUSTRALIAN MEN*
[Open era]
1968 Rod Laver
1969 Rod Laver
1970 John Newcombe
1971 John Newcombe
1987 PAT CASH
2002 Lleyton Hewitt

*CAREER ATP TITLES*
109...Jimmy Connors
94...IVAN LENDL
77...John McEnroe
64...Pete Sampras
62...Roger Federer
62...Bjorn Borg
62...Guillermo Vilas
60...Andre Agassi

*WEEKS AT ATP #1*
286...Pete Sampras
285...Roger Federer
270...IVAN LENDL
268...Jimmy Connors
170...John McEnroe

*CONSECUTIVE WEEKS AT ATP #1*
237...Roger Federer, 2004-08
160...Jimmy Connors, 1974-77
157...IVAN LENDL, 1983-88
102...Pete Sampras, 1993-95


All for now.



PREVIOUS TIME CAPSULES:
1987 Roland Garros (Graf), 1989 Roland Garros (Sanchez/Chang), 1990 Roland Garros (Seles/Gomez), 1990 Wimbledon (Navratilova), 1990 Wimbledon (Edberg/Becker), 1991 U.S. Open (Connors), 1993 Australian Open (Seles & Courier), 1993 Wimbledon (Graf/Novotna), 2003 & '05 U.S. Open (Henin/Clijsters), 2001-09 Australian Open (Dokic Down Under)

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