Teenagers began making their mark on the tennis scene in 1989. "Almost the older ones you have to call us now," Boris Becker acknowledged. "There is a big change here. A whole new generation coming up in both the men's and the women's." Steffi Graf added, "This has not been the easiest year. I have had some tough matches. And the younger ones are coming up and they are going to develop next year, that is for sure, and just keep getting better and better." Monica Seles made known, "We hit the ball much harder and faster than before. Steffi Graf, (Gabriela) Sabatini, me and a couple of upcoming players can do something to raise the level of the sport." However Martina Navratilova pointed out, "There's more power in tennis, and not just in doubles. It's the equipment. You just can't hit the ball that hard with the little wooden rackets. But there will always be a place for the shot maker in tennis."
"If Seles had Steffi's serve," Martina made the observation, "we'd all be out of the game. Her groundstrokes are incredible. But there's Steffi's serve and forehand. I have to play better tennis to beat Steffi than anyone else I've played. Better than Chris (Evert). I can't really say about Billie Jean (King) or Margaret Court, because when I played them they were past their prime...For me, Steffi is the hardest to play. But Seles hits from both sides better than anybody and she is not an all-around player. She is uncomfortable at the net. But if she can get that going, she will be very dangerous. She is dangerous already, but she will be a complete power and she would be awesome."
Chris won her 100th U.S. Open singles match in 1989. She contributed her consistency to "desire. I needed it in my life. You have to have a lot of desire, concentration, determination. I think Jimmy Connors has that same quality, maybe it is even a need." Her decision to retire from the sport in 1989 was seen as the passing of an era. Ted Tinling remarked, "Now, the sun has truly set." Chris made the comment, "There are a lot of players that can cause upsets and then, 2 days later, lose to someone ranked 100 in the world. That's why players like Steffi and myself in the past, Martina, that's why we have been great, because we have been able to never have a letdown in a 2-week tournament." Jose Higueras believed, "The mind is the most important thing in tennis." In 1989, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario became the first Spanish woman to win a Grand Slam final. She stated, "I went out 100% thinking I could win and I fought for every single point." Steffi reasoned, "Sometimes you have good days and bad days."
In music in 1989, the Elton John's song 'Sacrifice' turned out to be his first British No. 1 solo hit. Lyricist Bernie Taupin recounted, "It's a simple lyric, but it's an intelligent adult lyric. It's basically about the rigors of adult love, and it's a million miles away from 'Your Song.' Elton came up with a brilliant melody, and his performance on it gives it a lot of integrity and meaning. It's not a surface song." In an interview in 2002, Bernie voiced, "If you look to the really early days, such as the Elton John album and Tumbleweed Connection, you can see they were the product of my fertile imagination. They are full of western imagery but I realised I couldn't keep doing that. Elton wouldn't be happy having himself immersed in a world that wasn't his. As he developed his personality, I couldn't continue the way I was going...I have to be very conscious of the words I put in his mouth. I still write what I feel, but when I've finished a song, I have to see if it's something I want to present to him or if it's more suited for use elsewhere." Bernie made the point, "People talk about Elton John's golden age, but I don't think the early songs are close to anything we have written more recently. The early ones were not drawn from experience but imagination. When you live life, you know all the pitfalls it can throw at you. 'Your Song' could only have been written by a 17-year-old who'd never been laid in his life."
And on Bastille Day (July 14) 1989, France - one of the world's largest industrial democracies - marked the bicentennial of the French Revolution with an event held at the Place du Trocadero to remember the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It was explained the objective of the French Revolution was to achieve liberty, fraternity and equality for all people. At a state dinner at Elysee Palace, Francois Mitterrand told Mikhail Gorbachev, "The spirit of the French Revolution has always been present in the social life of our country. For perestroika is also a revolution. I hope it will know a great destiny that will not be limited to a national context." Of the Louis XVI era, historian Simon Schama argued, "The old regime was not a society doddering its way to the grave. Far from appearing moribund, signs of dynamism and energy may be found wherever the historian looks. From the King downward, the elite were less obsessed with tradition than with novelty and less preoccupied with feudalism than with science." Of Jean-Joseph Mounier, Simon said, "Not yet 30, Mounier, the son of a draper, like so many others of the generation of 1789 was a product not of bourgeois frustration with the old regime, but of its effortless escalator to social promotion."
