ITF

25 K en: It definitely doesn't feel like 28 years, something that monumental. That was such a huge moment in my career, kind of a defining moment. It could have been 28 days ago in a lot of ways. It's pretty crazy to think about. There are a lot of tournaments I don't even remember winning. But Wimbledon, the US Open and, for sure, the Olympics, you don't forget those. I was always an athlete. I played all sports. I'm a huge sports fan. Tennis wasn't necessarily my favourite sport. Baseball was. Certainly, as a kid growing up playing tennis, you always aspire to play Wimbledon someday. But to me, the Olympics surpasses everything. It crosses over every genre. Everybody knows the Olympics. I traded my Reebok outfit that we won the gold in for [baseball player] Tino Martinez's baseball uniform. They won the gold, too, and he hit two home runs in that game. We swapped. There were some great friendships made, some amazing memories. Getting to meet Carl Lewis and walk with him at the ceremonies was pretty amazing. I had just turned 25 in '88. You don't have those aspirations as a teen. You don't imagine that those kinds of things could become a reality. When I got back to New York, my father-in- law picked me up at JFK. I'm sure he was bragging to everyone because everybody seemed to know that I was coming off the plane. I came out of the customs area and everyone was clapping. It was really cool. It didn't change when I got back to St. Louis. They wanted me to come down and throw out the first pitch at a Cardinals game. Those were good times. R obert: It was so long ago. It was a great time in my life. I knew when I was in the finals, I knew at the time it was probably something I was only going to do once. The Olympics was kind of cool in that sense because I knew it was going to be a one-time deal. They played the national anthem, how dramatic it was. We were up two sets to love and then came back from two sets all. We'd never lost to that team [Sergio Casal and Emilio Sanchez], we probably played them a dozen times. They were a tough team, a Top 5 team and we matched up well against them. Ken served for the match twice, and we ended up winning 9-7. I probably would've remembered it more if I had lost that match. I would've thrown my silver medal away. We were the first ones to win a gold medal, too [after the full return of tennis to the Games]. The gold medal probably ranks No. 1 in my career just because I only got it one time. Actually the four of them: winning that, the US Open for the first time, Wimbledon for the first time, and the French Open. My older kids, when they were teens, they used to wear my medal for Halloween. They would run around trick-or-treating with the gold medal. I keep it in my drawer. I hide it because when you have a big family everyone liked to hang out at our house. Someone once broke in and stole my watches and Carling's [Bassett-Seguso] diamond ring and the only thing they left was the gold medal. Yeah. Maybe they felt the other stuff was worth a lot of money, but they didn't want to get caught and thought the gold medal is too unique. I probably would've remembered it more if I had lost that match. I would've thrown my silver medal away.

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