a guy named McEnroe said. It was the press conference before the semifinals of the January 1991 Australian Open. “Edberg versus Lendl, McEnroe against Becker.” The only difference was: I wasn’t the one saying it. Patrick McEnroe had then proceeded to give Boris Becker a good scare, winning the first set in a tiebreaker before succumbing in four.One of the nicer surprises of the beginning of the ’90s was my baby brother Patrick’s reinvention of himself as a tennis player. He had followed a strong junior career—at one point rising to as high as number three in the nation—with a not-especially-distinguished varsity career at Stanford. I think that when he did so well in the juniors, it was the first time people started paying him a lot of attention in his own right, and so he wilted a bit when he got to college. When he got to his senior year, our mom told him to forget about his dreams of playing professional tennis: It was time to look for a real job.I had a talk with Mom.
