When 17-year-old Michael Chang won the French Open in 1989, it was a huge event for American tennis. Not only was it the story of a teenager coming from seemingly nowhere to win a major, it also represented the end of a nearly (gasp!) five-year drought of men’s slam champions for the United States. After all, never before had there been more than four consecutive calendar years in the entire history of the sport when an American had not claimed one of the four slams.
Chang’s victory ushered in a golden age for American men’s tennis. He was joined by Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Jim Courier. Collectively the group won a total of 27 grand slam titles (with Sampras’s 14 leading the way) over a 15-year period, from Chang’s win in Paris through to Agassi’s last major, at the Australian Open in 2003.
