It wasn't until '79 I won my first amateur championship, and then, by '81, I was 14, and I won my first world championship, which was amazing to me, and in a very real sense, that was the first real victory I had.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I became number one just after the World Championships in India. I was very young then, and I remember it was just a great feeling, my first World Championship.
The first win came very quick, and I didn't know what it meant to win a major championship. I was a teenager, I was very young. I didn't know what I was doing. I just needed some time to get settled in on the tour.
I'd like to think I could have and should have won more, but that's not the point. And I was at the point where I was playing great tennis in the mid 80s - the type of tennis people hadn't seen before - and I was very proud of that.
I had a great season and truly enjoyed competing around the world - from Monaco, where I managed to establish a world record, to Beijing, where I finally captured my first world outdoor title.
The very first tournament I watched is the U.S. Open when I was 13. And that was the year Juli Inkster won.
I won player of the year and players' player, two cups and two championship medals, had a great time.
It wasn't my plan to create such a record. All I did was put in the effort to win every match I played and it went on for weeks, months and years until my defeat to Ross Norman in Toulouse in 1986.
I made my debut on October 10, 2008, so it'll be seven years to the day that I could become world champion. That's a massive night to be crowned.
It was a tough year for me, '89, losing two Slam finals and losing another five finals. It wasn't until I won the Masters, or what's now called the ATP Finals, that things changed again. Suddenly I won seven tournaments in 1990 and became No. 1.
I began playing in the senior circuit when I was 15 and won the world senior amateur title the same year.