dark beige

With Michael Stich, Wimbledon Men's Singles Champion, 1991

Not many people know that I have spent the last few years of my life travelling backwards and forward through time, safeguarding my spectacular 1991 surprise victory at Wimbledon.

Think of me as like the Terminator, except that instead of trying to kill John Connor and ensure the future of Skynet, I'm merely ensuring that nothing in the past should somehow alter the chain of events that led me to be placed as 6th seed, and go on to win seven games straight, defeating the German whose shadow I had always stood in (Boris Becker) as he approached the twilight of his own career.

It might mean traveling back to October 3rd, 1963 to Sioux City, Iowa, to ensure that the mother of Dan Goldie, the tennis player, does not die in childbirth, thus ensuring that almost thirty years later the always underwhelming player would be my first round pick, an easy straight sets victory for the number six seed (me).

Or ensuring that my infamous fourth round match against Alexander Vladimirovich Volkov still ends in victory for me. Who can forget how I defeated the Russian 6–4 3–6 5–7 6–1 5–7, which meant I won despite him winning the same number of games as me overall. It all hinged on a lucky shot when I was at virtual set point down in one of the later sets. The ball was heading out but rebounded inwards off the inside edge of the top of the net post and landed inside the line as a result, saving me the game and eventually the match.

Do you know how hard it is to ensure that exactly every element of that shot happens again in exactly the same way? It's a good thing I'm constantly travelling through time or the stress of it all would have severely aged me!

I've had to pop up at various points throughout the adolescence of Andre Agassi, sowing the seeds of mild disharmony so that that rebellious streak of his hampered his true potential until the Wimbledon tournament of 1992, when he famously won and announced himself as a top table contender.

I also froze time and scattered various black waitresses and wardrobes around centre court, so that my nemesis Becker would be distracted (using knowledge gleaned in the future to help safeguard the past), and I even killed a child called Franz Liebl in Hamburg in 1977, because he was showing a LOT of potential at volleys.

You might think this all makes me sound like some kind of egomaniac desperate to safeguard my footnote in history, but that's not true: infact, it has been proven to me that if for any reason I should crash out in the third round to Omar Camporese, or even 1990 champion Stefan Edberg in the semi-finals, all of history will be fundamentally altered, and sophisticated killer robots will soon enslave us all.


SO IMPORTANT TO MANKIND

It's not easy being a Stich in time, but it is my life's work.