Man, I had totally blanked on Michael Chang until reading this amazing article about how Michael Chang almost quit in the French Open 1989 against Ivan Lendl, the number 1 player and one scary looking dude. Excellent read, I didn't realize he was such a good tennis player. [LA Times]
"I was this close to going up to the chair umpire and saying, 'I can't play anymore,' " Chang, 37, says during an interview near his Mission Viejo home, holding his right thumb and forefinger millimeters apart. "I actually walked to the service line and the umpire was looking at me -- and Lendl was looking at me -- and it crossed my mind to say, 'Who am I kidding here? I'm playing against the No. 1 player in the world, I'm throwing these lob shots and I can't move worth beans.' . . .
"And I started to think to myself, 'I'll get into the locker room and people will pat me on the back. I'll get to the press conference and people will say, 'Great effort today.' "
But even at that age -- before he forged his reputation as a dogged competitor who refused to quit on points, much less matches -- Chang knew he had to carry on.
"So when I got to that service line," he says, "I had an unbelievable conviction of heart like, 'Hey, what are you doing?' It was almost as if God was saying, 'You fought this hard to win the third and fourth sets and now you're going to call it quits?' It dawned on me that if I were to quit then, it would be that much easier to quit every other time I experienced difficulty.
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