1989 Wimbledon Championships – Men's Singles 1989 Wimbledon Championships – Men's Singles Boris Becker defeated the defending champion Stefan Edberg in the final, 6–0, 7–6, 6–4 to win the Gentlemen's Singles tennis title at the 1989 Wimbledon Championships. The semi-final match between Ivan Lendl and eventual champion Becker became at the time the longest ever Wimbledon semi-final at four hours and one minute long. It would not be until the 2013 championships that this record would be broken, when the semi-final match between Novak Djokovic and Juan Martín del Potro would last four hours and forty-three minutes. John McEnroe reached the semi-finals, his best showing in
Pat Cash Centre Court, where he celebrated with his family, girlfriend, and coach, Ian Barclay. He thus started a Wimbledon tradition that has been followed by many other champions at Wimbledon and other Grand Slam tournaments since. He only dropped one set during the entire tournament. He finished the year ranked at No. 7. In January 1988, Cash reached the Australian Open final for the second consecutive year and faced another Swede, Mats Wilander. It was the first men's singles final played at the new Melbourne Park venue on hard court, and Wilander won in a four-and-a-half-hour encounter, taking the fifth set