Wimbledon 92

Currently reading last Saturday’s Mint Lounge Wimbledon special. Was reading this article on the McEnroe-Borg rivalry, and I was taken back to the only McEnroe match that I clearly remember seeing. This was in Wimbledon 1992, which was more like a typical French Open. Upsets left right and centre. Unknown players making it to the latter rounds. Familiar players nowhere to be seen..

Back in the late 80s, when as a small boy, Wimbledon was probably the only Grand Slam I’d watch. Maybe the French Open, too, but I don’t really remember any French Open finals before 1990 (was that when the Ecuadorian Andres Gomez beat Andre Agassi, or was that in 1991? I guess that was 91, since Michael Chang won in 90). And in the 80s, Wimbledon meant just four names to me. Men’s finals had to be Boris Becker versus Stefan Edberg, and the ladies finals between Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova.

Coming back to 92, there was no Becker, no Edberg. Even Michael Stich, who had come from nowhere to win the previous title wasn’t anywhere to be seen. There was no Navratilova or Graf in the ladies’ tournament, which I think was won by Conchita Martinez (don’t remember the game, but remember seeing a Sportstar pic of her at the Champions’ Ball). As I told you, the 92 tournament was like a French Open (for pre-Nadalian readers, the French Open is supposed to be a tournament where heavyweights all lose in the early rounds, and each year there’s a new unexpected person who wins. It’s not supposed to be the monopoly it’s turned into of late).

In hindsight, looking back at the 1992 tournament, just looking at the semi-final line-up, I realize what a legendary tournament that was! Some names were then unknown, and were to become legendary later. One other was known, and you had reason to feel sorry for him at that point in time. And there was the lovable veteran.

Goran Ivanisevic beat Pete Sampras
Andre Agassi beat John McEnroe

No one had heard of the first two (Sampras had won the US Open in 1990, but we didn’t watch him, did we? No one watched either the Australian or US Opens those days. The timings were inconvenient), but they would show us their greatness in the coming decade. We all remembered Agassi as the guy who had lost two consecutive French Open finals (to Gomez and then to Jim Courier, having been 2 sets to nil up in the latter). And I don’t need to say much about McEnroe, except that perhaps that was the last I saw of him, save the odd appearance in Davis Cup.

Agassi beat Ivanisevic in the finals. 6-7 6-4 6-4 1-6 6-4. I still remember the scorecard. Thanks to the “checksum fact” that the Deccan Herald had published the following day. That both players had won exactly 25 games each.

Think, and tell me, if you can think of any other major tennis tournament with this kind of a semi-final line-up, spawning eras. Don’t throw up tournaments where the top four seeds were in the semis (that’s so increasingly common nowadays I’m losing interest in tennis).

And reading this issue  of Mint Lounge made me long for Sportstar again, for the times before it had become a tabloid. When I would read through pretty much every word of it, and crack sports quizzes.

PS: This post has been written entirely out of what I remember things to have been like, and I haven’t bothered checking the facts. So pliss excuse me, and correct me, if I’m wrong.

11 thoughts on “Wimbledon 92”

  1. Yeah. Even I remember the ’92 final scorecard! I think it was interrupted by rain once or twice. And Ivanisevic scored atleast 40 aces if I’m not mistaken.

    The ’96 Wimbledon had a similarly unexpected semifinals lineup. But it didn’t quite “spawn” eras. Krajicek, Ivanisevic, Stoltenburg and Martin! It was a very wet Wimbledon. Remember it well since the Indian cricket team also toured England that year.

    Regarding Sportstar, in hindsight, I wonder what made us read it so very religiously. Lack of choice I guess. The cricket writing in it was so very terrible in comparison to what we get to read on cricinfo these days.

  2. Pre-Nadalian readers (end of Para 3) know exactly what the French open is like..it’s the nadalian readers who wouldn’t know..:)

    And in the Ivanisevic-Agassi match, technically Ivanisevic won only 24 games right..the 7 games in the first set includes tiebreaker..:)

  3. Ivanisevic hit 45 aces – I remember marking each one off like a cricket scoresheet. Was supporting goran and was very sad with the result

  4. i remember a sergei bruguera winning 2(?) french opens grunting and groaning with each of his hits in the 5th set. of course cannot forget arantxa sanchez vicario, the short and slightly plump player. i used to support becker and graf then, dont quite know why.

    coming to the sportstar, i have fond memories of the magazine. cant compare it to the trash that is on crapinfo nowadays. r mohan, corbett etc were fine writers and adrian murrel’s photos were classic. I am proud to have retained a huge collection of these magazines from the late 80s to the mid 90s.

    1. karthik: Agree R Mohan was probably one of the better writers. But the same magazine hosted pieces by the likes of Lokapally, Dinakar and G Vishwanath who exemplify mediocrity. And yeah, how about Raju Bharathan’s trashy gossip!

      Cricinfo is in a different league, although it has its share of mediocrity. You didn’t get to read anyone remotely as readable as Dileep Premchandran or even Gideon Haigh (when he is not ranting) in Sportstar!

  5. Shrikanth, i just cannot put cricinfo in the same league as the sportstar. criicnfo’s writers do a decent job of writing on proceedings, but they lack the lucidity required to capture the finer details of the game. The sportstar was able to do just that, with its pictures and words. and i am talking of the days before the sportstar became a tabloid. the days when it was a proper magazine during the early 80s to the early 90s. it was sometime during the mid 90s that the standards dropped.

    i prefer cricinfo for their database and stats more than for their writing.

    also, comparing cricinfo to the sportstar is not entirely accurate since cricinfo does not do other sports. just cricket. the sportstar was the leading magazine among its contemporaries such as sportsworld, sportsweek etc because it managed to convey all that was happening in the world of sports beter than others. sure, it had its share of poor writers, but not so bad as to be unbearable. cricinfo sometimes gives me the feeling of emptiness when i read an article. something that could have been a wonderful article would have been made ordinary by some ordinary writing. as an example, the battle between tendulkar and steyn in the ind vs sa test series i thought was blown out of proportion by both cricinfo and the TV commentators as well as the live cricinfo commentators. I am sure the sportstar would have written about that battle in a manner that it richly deserved, while at the same time evoking a sense of awe from the readers on the two persons who fought it out in the middle.

    so thats my opinion. anyway, cheers to you, and hoping for some exciting cricket in future. i apologize for the very long post!

  6. I had one crib about sportstar though, they used to feature scorecards and detailed analysis of a tour VERY LATE. I remember, it would take a month for them to cover a test that happened say today.

    And well ofcourse the center page posters. The one reason Sportstar is cult for 20 somethings and 30 somethings of today.

    Domestic cricket coverage is ONE area where Cricinfo wins hands down, and also covering domestic cricket of other countries. Sportstar was constrained by bandwidth of its tier 1 writers.

Put Comment