ITF

197 I just started yelling at the top of my lungs, "Yeah!" I felt like right then it finally hit us. Mike: We just felt like we could taste a medal being in the quarterfinals and being the No. 1 seeds, and I don't think we ever lost to that team before. We were the heavy, heavy favourites. We just wanted to go away with something. That loss stands out as one of our most disappointing. Bob: We ended up getting on a flight three hours later. We just went back to the hotel and we were so upset that we got on a flight and took off and went to the US Open. During the entire ride back we were all pretty quiet – no one said a word. Winning the bronze in Beijing at the time was one of our proudest moments. But once we brought it on US soil, every time we showed the medal people would say, "Guys, what happened? Why didn't you win the gold?" I think it's the mentality in the States, or maybe it's some of the expectations we created, but we always had to tell a story about what happened. I've talked to [Mario] Ancic, [Ivan] Ljubicic and [Juan Martin] del Potro – all who won the bronze – and del Potro ranks the bronze medal right up there with his US Open title. He went home to a parade of people and a packed football stadium cheering for his accomplishment whereas here in the States is a little different. Mike: We were pretty stoked to come back in Beijing and get a medal, even though it wasn't gold. Just to get something so we could say we were Olympic medallists. Bob: But to then win the gold in London, you times that feeling by a hundred and times the reaction of the fans here in the States by a thousand. Mike: It was kind of a choked emotion. It's kind of surreal. You never really expect to be in that kind of position. You dream about it but once you're there everything is in a little bit of slow motion and it's a little bit emotional. I'm not a big crier, but there were watery eyes, it was close. Bob: We were in complete shock. Obviously it was just a whirlwind. We were incredibly pumped and then we were whisked back into the locker room to get our jacket and our uniform. And before we knew it we were on the medal stand in the middle of Wimbledon which made it even more surreal. We saw the flag going up and we thought we were watching it on TV, it just didn't feel real. We felt like we were little kids watching Carl Lewis win the gold or something. We went to Toronto [tournament] the next week, but it really didn't sink in until Cincinnati. I remember we were driving in a car to the site two weeks later and I just started yelling at the top of my lungs, "Yeah!" I felt like right then it finally hit us. We ended up having one of the best summers of our life just because we felt a big relief and we felt like nothing could bring us down, we were playing with joy on the court. It carried over into the next season where we almost won the Grand Slam. Mike: I remember being so happy for so long. We were still on cloud nine 12 months later just from winning the gold. We brought those medals around everywhere, all fall, we'd bring them to any event we went to and passed them around. But I started to see that mine was getting nicked up a little bit because once I brought it to a Maroon 5 concert for the guys in the band to see it, and one guy dropped it and took a little chunk out of it. Bob kept bringing his everywhere and throwing it to people and his was pretty mangled. It wasn't even round on one side. Bob: I brought it in my racket bag for three months just because I didn't want to get rid of it. I wanted to keep it with me as long as possible. I'd take it out of my bag during matches, throw it to the fans. I was extremely proud of it. I finally retired it in the fall because it was getting too dinged up. I switched it out with Mike's. His was shiny and the ribbon was perfect so I did a switcheroo on him. He didn't realise it until the next year. Mike: I was like, "Dude, that's wrong."

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