What did the author realize when he reached the semifinals at Wimbledon ........

Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow :

My dad and I both started playing tennis at the same time in 1967. Though I was small for my age, I was fast on my feet and seemed to have an instinct for where my opponent would hit his next shot. At the age of nine, I put on my white shorts and shirt and started playing in tennis tournaments around the New York area. By the time I was 12, I was No. 7 in the countries in the under-12 category. When I was 16, I won my first national singles title. Then, in 1977, as a chubby faced 18-year-old with brown ringlets and a red headband, I came out of nowhere to reach the semifinals at Wimbledon. Though I wouldn't have told a soul back then, that's when I realized I had the potential to be the best tennis player in the world.
I worked my way up the ranks and by 1979, I was world No. 3, hunting down Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg. I was winning a lot and I loved it-loved being the lone gunfighter. I won the US Open in both '79 and '80. Then, more and more, the problem became that almost everybody was somebody I shouldn't lose to. There was so much pressure to win
in the early rounds of tournaments and make it to the finals. To conquer the pressure, I tried building defenses that almost nothing (and nobody) could get through.
But behind my defenses were some very dark places. There was always a devil inside me that I had to fight against. And that devil was fear of failure.
Eventually I had made it to the finals at Wimbledon that year, earning the rematch I'd badly wanted with Borg. Though I'd beaten the great, smooth Swede in last year's US Open, Borg had won Wimbledon an incredible five times in a row, including against me. I en got off to a sluggish start. I was tight, over impressed with the occasion. Borg won the first set, 6-4.
As I loosened up, the match turned into a dog fight. I won a tie breaker in the second set, and the third  set was going in that direction too. Underneath my nerves and my certainty that I had to play every point to my utmost, a strange idea was starting to materialize. He's not quite as hungry as last year. This match is mine to take if I can take it. After that, I
knew in my bones that I was going to win, and I did. The final score was 4-6, 7-6, 7-6, 6-4. When I beat Borg at the US Open a few months later, I officially replaced him as world No. 1, I had thought that No. 2 was a big deal. But No. 1 was a very strange place indeed-the peak of the mountain, the icy winds blowing around my head.
For four years 1, John McEnroe was the biggest winner in men's tennis.


 

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