That's absurd. I use a mid, and I don't have a big ego. I just happen to be a very, very good tennis player. Let's face it: people choose larger frames because they're not as confident in their ball-striking ability. I realized that much from an early age! When I was 6, someone gave me the 125-inch Pro Staff for Christmas. I used it at tennis camp for about two days, and it was utterly humiliating to run around with a frame that big. Thus, after the second day, my friends and I smashed against a rock, and it broke. I told my dad that someone had stolen it, and the next day we went to pick out a new frame. I wanted the 90-inch prince, but dad insisted on the 110.
I played with the 110 for that summer, and it was a joke. I must have lost two or three extra matches a week because the stringbed was a trampoline. The next winter, I bought my first 95 in preparation for tennis camp. All the other kids were running around with their 110s, hitting errant shots and otherwise making complete fools of themselves, and there I was, with my 95, slicing them to pieces and looking like a man among boys. But there was problem: the racquet was still just too damn big. My skills had improved so much that the extra stringbed on my 95 was useless; it served only to make the racquet less stable. I quickly switched to the Prince Graphite 90, which was a decent racquet but failed to give me the stability that I so desperately craved. Thus, at the age of 9, I switched to the PS 6.0 85, and it played like a dream. The next summer, I just salughtered people; it wasn't even funny. I was beating everyone: kids, adults, old men, etc. My summer record that year was 47-6.
But as my skills continued to develop, it became plain to everyone involved that the PS 85 stringbed was just too damn unstable for a kid with such developed strokes. Thus, I made the switch to Lendl's 80-inch Adidas racquet, and the improvement was immediate. Before long, the PS 85 became a punch line for my friends and me. Working with the Lendl racquet, I was able to paint the lines with relative ease and hit deep into both corners without fear of going long. After six months with the Lendl racquet, I was a nationall ranked junior in the in the under-16s.
The next year, I struggled mightily against the older kids in the under-18 group. One day, after I dropped a three-set match to an older kid, my coach called me aside and uttered the words that I will never froget, "What the hell are you doing out there?! Are you serious or not? Get a REAL racquet with a respectable head size." With that, I burst into tears, and we embraced. I threw the racquet on the ground with all my might, and we both began stomping on it, smashing it to splinters and screaming, "F*ckin' thing sucks!" The next day, we went to the Wilson Pro Room, and I bought an unused T-2000 with a 70-inch head. As soon as I picked it up, I knew why Lendl couldn't win Wimbledon: his racquet sucked. The T-2000 was my saving grace, and I ended by next season ranked #6 in the under-18s.
I decided against turning pro right away, believing that I needed to further refine my game. I moved to Florida to practice with Nick for a summer, and it soon became apparent to me that I would have to become sharper if I wanted a pro career. I played Agassi but lost in the third set because of an errant forehand. Nick walked over after the match and said, "Why are you playing a T-2000? Are you trying to prove a point? Quit with the ego and get something decent." The next day, he ordered 10 customized Dunlop Maxply sticks for me. Sixty-six-inch head. I had never had so much fun in my life as I did the rest of that summer! I was the second-ranked player in camp and would have passed Agassi had it not been for an injury!
I made my pro debut the next year at the Volvo. I wound up losing in three sets to Becker. We spoke after the match, and he told me that I would have won the match had I made him run a little more. But what was I to do? I just wasn't as accurate as I needed to be with my groundstrokes! I hired Jose Higueras as my coach, and he was very honest, telling me that the Maxply was simply too unstable. Deep down, I knew he was right: the racquet was an oversized piece of ****. Higueras suggested that I switch to a Slazenger squash racquet, and I did. It was 45 inches of rock-hard stability. I beat Chang at Open in 91 but plateaued soon thereafter at #35 in the world. In January of 1992, I met Sampras at a charity tournament, and he told me that I could win a grand slam if I tightened up my backhand. I had secretly felt the same way for many years but simply didn't know what else to do, so I decided to take a year off to fix my swing and get clean. I ran into Borg at a dryout clinic in Stockholm, and he suggested that I switch to a badminton racquet. By Jove, he was right! The squash racquet was a jumbo-sized joke. I needed some goddamn stability in the stringbed, and I got it with my 30-inch McGregor badminton stick. I went on to crack the top 30 and complete a very respectable 13-years career on the tour.
