This week we holler at our boy Michael Chang and his crazy run at the ’89 French Open, and more specifically, his epic gauntlet throw down against the number one player in the world, Ivan Lendl.

For those of you who don’t have a reference point for this, don’t worry, I got you. I’m going to set you up with the highlight package a little further down the page. Hopefully by then I’ll have pressed your Michael Chang interest button and the clips will affect you in the same way they did me. Seriously, the video recon I did for this got me so pumped that

I felt like grabbing my racket and hitting a few overhead smashes against the side of my

building. But that would’ve been insane so I just watched a couple more videos and moved on.

Chang’s fourth round match was one of the greatest in the history of the French Open. I don’t even think it would be a stretch to say it was one of the greatest tennis matches of all time, period. It was pure sports theatre. It was Chang versus Lendl. Hero versus Villain. Champion versus underdog and this is not a typing error. Chang was 17 years old.

Not only was he was 17 years old, he was also 5–9, 135 pound, Chinese American professional tennis player. As he patrolled the baseline that hot June day at Roland Garros he was shattering more stereotypes and boundaries than can be counted.

To get to this point Chang had already overcome tremendous odds. Over the course of the first week he had taken out Eduardo Masso, Pete Sampras and Francisco Roig. If the road had ended there it still would’ve been deemed a massive success by any standard.

The match was all Lendl in the beginning. The number one player in the world showed virtually no weakness at all and took the first two set 6–4,6–4. He broke Chang in the opening game of the third and it seemed all but over. But it wasn’t. Chang immediately broke back and the crowd started started to sense that something special could happen. Our boy Michael wasn’t going down without a fight.

Chang went on to win the third set 6–3 and carried that momentum into the fourth. But his body wasn’t up for it. He began to experience such severe leg cramps that he was guzzling watering and eating bananas at every possible opportunity. It was so bad that he later admitted that he was very close to retiring from the match and spent the better part of the fourth set willing himself forward while contemplating the pros and cons of ending the match.

Probably the most bizarre and definitely most entertaining aspect of the match was Chang’s tactics. He became desperate to survive and started doing things like hitting what he described as “moon balls” back to Lendl just as a way of shortening points. With all these types of shots he also was going for winners way more often than he normally would just so he conserve what little energy he had left. It worked.

Chang went on to win the fourth set and suddenly found himself in the driver seat in the fifth. Our boy Michael did everything he could to survive and advance, point by point, game by game. He even served underhand to Lendl at one point, drawing whistles from the crowd, until they realized the serverity of his cramping and dehydration.

The tactics were not only working effectively to tilt the score in Chang’s favor but they were also helping him with the psychological battle. Lendl, the stoic intimidator, was coming undone. He began complaining about the court conditions and the officiating and at one point was even given a penalty and the loss of a point which gave Chang the game.

Suddenly Chang found himself up 5–3 in the fifth set and had a break point. In a final bizarre move he stood to receive the point right in the middle of the baseline. The move worked. Lendl double faulted and Chang collapsed on the court out of joy and exhaustion. He had just won the match of his life. Less than a week later he would defeat Stefan Edberg and become the youngest Grand Slam winner in the history of tennis.

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