As a lifelong passionate tennis fan, I’ve seen my fair share of awesome matches. Several stand out, and Pat Cash’s exuberant win over Ivan Lendl at the 1987 Wimbledon is one of them. So of course I was thrilled that the Australian player was headlining a talk at the International Tennis Hall of Fame (ITHF) this month.
And the Q & A with the now-59-year-old Cash was excellent. So much so, that when it got to the part where the audience could ask questions, no one wanted to leave, with the event going over. And Cash was so giving with his time, he kept telling more and more stories.
It’s fitting that Cash’s intimate talk was the last event to be held in that space, the USTA Wing of the museum, since the entire gallery is undergoing a major multi-million dollar renovation on Nov. 1 (Friday!). The museum will have its grand opening in May 2025.
“We’re also launching a global youth tennis program which is going to reach kids around the world, said Julianna Barbieri, Senior Vice President, Content & Partnerships. “[It’s] an extension of our TeamFAME program here. So that will kick off next year too.”
She also announced some specifics on the separation of the Infosys Hall of Fame Open and the Inductees Ceremony, which will now take place later in the summer, Aug. 21-23.
After that important announcement, the Director of Tennis, Bill Mountford, sat down with Pat Cash in a talk about his decorated career and how “mental fortitude played a role on and off the court.”
Here are some highlights from the fascinating discussion.
Cash’s answers have been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Cash retired in 1997. In addition to hosting CNN’s “Open Court” magazine show, Cash has worked as a commentator, player coach and runs an acclaimed tennis academy. He also played on the Champions and Legends tours, including winning the Hall of Fame event in Newport in 2008 and 2009. He recalled a hilarious story from that event.
Last time I was here, I was playing in the Champions event. That was a year that Mac [John McEnroe] got defaulted, which is really hard to do in a Legends tournament, when he’s the biggest name there.
Even though Cash’s biggest win was on the grass courts of Wimbledon, he talked about his favored playing surface.
I didn’t grow up playing on grass courts. Ironically, I grew up playing on clay. I was sort of the best clay court junior player, I suppose, over 14, and I had the opportunity at that stage to go overseas to Europe and check out the players over there.
If any of the players today are complaining about the Tour, I’d like them to hear about the grueling travel Cash had to endure as a young player.
We flew 48 hours and I remember the stops: Melbourne, Sydney, Sydney, Singapore, Singapore. Dubai, Dubai, Athens, Athens, Rome, Rome, Milan. I will never forget that route. 48 hours later, we arrived in beautiful Milan, Italy.”
I’m sure I must have forgotten a stop among the ones he mentioned, there were so many!
At a nations’ competition for under 16 year-olds, he recalled his first matchup against a certain Swedish player who would later become a professional rival.
’Listen, can you play the Swedish kid?’ He was asked. “He’s the extra player on the team. Can you hit with him? And I was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’
20 minutes later, this kid hadn’t missed a ball, and we’re looking at each other going, ‘He’s not even good enough to be on the team, and he’s so much better than we are!’
And this kid turned out to be okay. He’s called Mats Wilander [who would become a 7-time major winner], and that’s the first European I ever hit with.
Cash also helped his home country win two Davis Cup championships, in 1983 and ’86, during the height of Davis Cup fever. At the ’83 Davis Cup, he was the youngest player to play the final, defeating the Swedish competitor to get the Cup for Australia.
I love Davis Cup. We put our heart and soul into playing. That was the thing we wanted to do. We want to, obviously, try and win the Australian Open. They were the two things you had to play for your country. You look through the museum here, you’ll see Aussies everywhere.
The former world No. 4 talked about powering through ridiculous injuries when he was a young professional, including back surgery in ’86, the year before he won Wimbledon.
I think I grew up in the era where you just got to be tough. You did the hard training.
He also pushed for protective ranking as a result, which is something that the current players benefit from.
I needed my appendix out, and I think I’m going to get a wild card at Wimbledon, because I lost my ranking, and they didn’t have protected rankings back in those days. But they did bring it in because of my insistence. Actually, I wrote many letters to the ATP, ‘you’ve got to help support players, get them ranking protection.’ I haven’t had anyone, not one letter from any of the guys thanking me for that [laughs].
He talked about his injuries and how that led him to his true calling in tennis.
This has been quite an amazing journey throughout my career, having had 18 surgeries because of tennis.
Now I can be very thankful for those injuries because it really changed my life in a much more positive direction. It wasn’t great for my tennis career. But it’s not all about being a tennis player. I wasn’t born to be a tennis player. I was born to do something else. I was born to teach and I’ve been tennis coaching for quite a while now, on the tour. That’s been my main job for the last 10 years.
Leading up to the ’87 final, he spoke about how he found a second gear during the fortnight at Wimbledon, and the techniques that worked for him.
Everything clicked. And I managed to continue that right through the tournament, luckily.
I’ve already been there before, and that’s with visualization. That’s what I was doing working with my sports psychologist, I literally played through every single scenario that could happen. By the time I walked on the court, it literally felt like I’d been there before.
He described the electric atmosphere of that epic final against Lendl.
The one thing I didn’t really expect was when you come out of the clubhouse, the people around the side can see you come out, and they start roaring, and it’s like a Mexican wave. I never really had that before.
Princess Diana was up there in the Royal Box, I had met her a couple of times before. You can’t get away from the fact that it was a big moment.
Many people may not realize this, but when he won the championship trophy, Cash was the first to climb up to his player’s box to celebrate with his family. The Wimbledon climb has now become iconic, but they can thank Cash for that.
So the night before, I said, ‘Tomorrow, I’m going to climb up. And that was it. I didn’t want to jinx it or anything after the match. If you’ve ever been to a Wimbledon final, you know how efficient they are. The whole thing’s set up: by the time you sit down and put your racket in your bag, the red carpet’s out there, (or green carpet they have now), and the trophies are half set up. And I sat there, and I’m sort of waving at them, going, ‘should I do it or not? And I looked at my right, and they started to bring everything out, and I went, ‘geez, I better do it now.’ Otherwise I’m not going to get it done. So I race off.
While Cash was here, he also spent time with the TeamFAME kids, ITHF’s outreach program. Listening to legends such as Pat Cash is another reason why we Rhode Islanders are so lucky to have this gem of the tennis museum right here.
Next year’s Induction Ceremony with the legendary Bryan Brothers and five-time major winner Maria Sharapova should prove incredible.