Mats Wilander: The Winner Who Took a Chance (Story)

By Harriett Richie

Seventeen-year-old Mats Wilanders of Sweden impressed the crowd at the 1982 French Open tennis championships. Slender and tanned from hours of practice in the sun, Wilander (VEE-lan-der) moved quickly and expertly over the dusty clay court. He appeared calm and confident as he drilled balls across the net with his two-fisted backhand. If he could win, he wouldbe the youngest champion ever in one of the most important tennis championships in the world.

Wilander, who began playing tennis when he was seven, had been the French Junior champion in 1981. However, he would have to win matches against Ivan Lendl and Vitas Gerulaitis, two of the best players in the world, to stay in the Open. No one guessed that Wilander could be either of them. But he did.

Wilander's opponent in the semifinal round was the world's fourth-ranked player, Jose-Luis Clerc. Their match was close. Finally, Wilander needed only one more point to win. Clerc his a forehand drive that the line judge ruled out of bounds. Clerc argued that the ball was good, but the umpire ignored him. He declared Wilander the winner and climbed down from his tall chair beside the court. Instead of walking toward the net to shake hands as the players usually do at the end of a match, Wilander walked to the umpire and asked to play the point over. "I can't win like this," he said. "The ball was good."

When asked later about Wilander's request to play the point over, the umpire replied, "In all my experience, I have never seen a gesture like that on match point."

In an unusualy ruling the umpire let them play the point again. Moments later Clerc hit a backhand shot into the net. Wilander had wonthe point. The crowd stood and cheered for Wilander, who would now play in the championship match.

The temperature in the June sun was more than 90 degrees when Wilander and Guillermo Vilas played for the championship. Vilas had won the Open in 1977 and was currently ranked number three in the world. Among the crowd packed into the stadium was Wilander's fathe, a foreman in an air-conditioning factory. The newspaper in their home town of Vaxjo had paid his air fare to France as a courtesy. Wilander's brothers, Ingmar and Anders, were also there. They had driven almost a thousand miles through the night from the south of Sweden to Paris.

Vilas won the first set, which lasted more than an hour. The rallies were close. Sometimes they hit the ball back and forth more than fifty times before a point was won. But the score was not close. Wilander only won one game.

The sky darkened. Thunder rumbled through the air, and wind gusted through the stadium as they began their second set. Vilas began making errors, but Wilander did not lose his confidence or his patience. Wilander won the exhausting second set in a tie breaker.

The match lasted for almost five hours. Each playedhad won two games in the final set when according to one count, they volleyed the ball seventy-eight times before the point ended. Finally, at match point, Wilander hit a backhand shot that Vilas could not return. Once again the crowd was standing and screaming for Wilander. He had just become the youngest champion ever in the French Open by winning the longest finals match ever played in the tournament. For millions of people around the world who had watched the tournament on television and knew of his honesty and courage, he was a new example of what it means to be a good sport.