When Chang stalled in the rankings, unable to get over the final hump, he attempted to transform himself from a grinder to a power player. To great fanfare, he had his racket company, Prince, design a stick that was one inch longer than the industry standard. It improved his serving angle but also reminded everyone that Chinese guys had to compensate for genetic shortcomings besides our height. Where did Prince add that inch of length? To the shaft, naturally.For the record, during my days of varsity tennis (Yep), I bought that exact Michael Chang Prince extra-long racquet for $200 bucks. And yes, that's basically what it's like to be Chinese in this country...extraordinarily stupid things spoken with such unassuming genuineness. (Bruce Lee was indeed a constant figure of reference in my daily life. As an uncle. Which white kids eat up like candy until you inform them that gullible is written on the ceiling. Don't look.)
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As a junior player, I insisted on being as un-Chang-like as possible, hitting one-handed backhands and rushing the net. It worked: Unlike Michael Chang, I lost a lot. My coaches pleaded with me to put two hands on my backhand, stay on the baseline, and stop trying to hit fancy shots. But as long as kids at local tournaments would tell me that I looked like Chang (it had been Bruce Lee, before) or assume I knew him personally (I did not), I refused. The expectations weren't just from white people. When my parents' friends learned that I liked tennis, they invariably said something like, "Wah, maybe you can be the next Chang Depei!" They always used his Chinese name: "cultivated virtue," roughly.
And as the article suggests, Michael Chang definitely DID become sort bizarre iconic figure in our lives. Thinking back though, it is KINDA crazy. In that tournament, he trashed a young Pete Sampras in straight sets then went onto defeat fuckin' Ivan Lendl in his prime, and THEN beat Stefan Edberg in the finals, becoming the first American to win the French Open in 34 years. And he was 17. What the fuck was I doing at 17? Yes, playing guitar in Euphoria on a ratty stage in Spartanburg.
I just checked this out on Wikipedia, and damn...this is quite an impressive feat:
For those of you who inexplicably made it this far, here's some footage: Seriously though, read the article...it'll somehow teach you a lot about me.Everything seemed to be going to form when Lendl comfortably took the first two sets 6–4, 6–4 and then broke Chang's serve in the opening game of the third set. But Chang broke back immediately and went on to claim the third set 6–3. Part way through the fourth set, Chang experienced a severe attack of leg cramps. Fighting to stay in the match, Chang resorted to some novel tactics. For a period, he began taking all speed out of the match by playing "moon balls", causing Lendl, who was known to be one of the calmest players, to lose his rhythm. He began to swear at the umpire and the crowd, especially after losing a key point in the fifth set when Chang shocked him by delivering an under-arm serve. Chang later explained, "I was trying to break his concentration. I would do anything to stay out there." (That underhanded serve achieved cult status among amateurs and, at least in Chang's hometown area of Southern California, it was not unheard of to see juniors emulate the swing in desperation while trying to come back from behind in a match during the 1990s.)
Barely able to stand, and screaming with pain after many of his shots, Chang continued to battle on. Despite being on the verge of physical breakdown, he fought his way to a 5–3 lead in the fifth set with two match points on Lendl's serve. Aiming to break Lendl's concentration one more time, Chang stood well inside the baseline, almost at the T-line in the centre of the court while waiting to receive Lendl's serve (normally an almost suicidal position when facing an opponent's serve). The tactic worked as Lendl produced a double-fault to give Chang the victory, 4–6, 4–6, 6–3, 6–3, 6–3 in four hours and 37 minutes. Chang sank to his knees and broke down in tears at the conclusion of the match. Seven days later, he became the youngest male champion in Grand Slam history.
6 comments:
How did I not know that you played varsity tennis? Jesus, you ARE trying to be Indian.
Wait, you don't remember the Chang/Lendl match? That's how I learned about video degradation...watching mom and all her Chinese friends endlessly copy and watch that match over and over on VHS.
I still remember the front page article on the Dayton Daily News. Some Chinese guy on his knees, covered in red-ish sand and crying.
MH: Tennis is NOT an Indian thing. Wtf?
Hass: I remember him laying on his back for some reason...but yes, I distinctly remember seeing it on the Chinese newspaper. I sorta mashed the Lendl-Edberg matches into one uber-match. That underhand serve and crowding the service line were pretty sweet though.
Did you read the article?
OK, so I just noticed J.V.'s post directed at me (What can I say, I have a life, and don't check your blog every single goddam day).
In response:
I actually agree with these guys. Most modern conservatives irritate me, for the same reason liberals do; they look to the government (not themselves) for the solution.
Liberals: The government has a responsibility to take care of people and help the little guy. Those that have should give to those who have not, but we don’t think people will do so willingly, so we’ll use taxes to redistribute the wealth according to the pressing needs of the moment.
Modern Conservatives: The government is ours to use to loot the system. It will back us up if we’ve made bad loans and pour business decisions. The government is responsible for taking care of us, not the little guy.
R-Sac (g*d I hate that name): These mortgage lenders made bad loans to people who couldn’t pay them. The mortgage lenders made poor business decisions, and the borrowers did so as well. A pox on both their houses, let them fail (although Schumer was the one who screwed IndyMac). Otherwise, we just end up creating a continuing trend of irresponsibility where the government (i.e. me and my tax dollars) keep bailing out people who screw up. The problem here isn’t regulators, or a lack thereof, it’s that people attempted to jerry-rig the market knowing that a government bailout would backstop the system. Happened with the airlines as well.
I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Livy: “I would have the reader trace the process of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them.”
The final line is the best, "the dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them."
R "Howard Beal" S
I think that's the first reasonable thing you've ever said.
(Other than that one time you said "Hey, this is a pretty good beer.")
Awesome video.
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