Davis Cup Journal:
Semi Final in Spain, part 2

by John Yandell

Prior to taking off for Spain, I’d planned to go to San Diego July 14 to film McEnroe in a seniors’ event for an upcoming section of TennisONE’s ProStrokes. (Look forward to seeing those beautiful volleys on TennisONE soon.) The press conferences after these events are usually pretty meaningless, but given the strange twist of Davis Cup events, I decided to check it out, and sure enough, some interesting information actually emerged.

Before the match I ran into an old friend of John’s and mine who’d spent some time with John since he got to San Diego. "How’s he feeling about the whole Davis Cup thing?" I asked.

"Not a happy camper," my friend replied. "He called me before the Agassi thing came out and said "You are NOT going to believe this."

Then my friend started to laugh, "Some kid asked him in the clinic yesterday how long he was going to be Davis Cup Captain," he continued. The answer was "Not long!" We’re both laughing now.

But how could John not be questioning whether it’s all worth it? Two weeks in London for Wimbledon last week. Then the seniors in San Diego through Saturday. On Sunday it’s back to Spain—and you can’t even fly to Santender. It’s Madrid, then another flight and an hour car ride. All to be stomped on by the Spainards on red clay without either of our top players.

But John McEnroe is nothing if not resilient—not to mention a natural fighter at heart. At the seniors’ press conferences, they let the fans watch. When McEnroe said rather emphatically that he wasn’t planning on going all the way to Spain to lose, they broke out in spontaneous applause. You could see it had a good effect on John.

He got pretty excited and talked for about 15 minutes. The breaking news was that, just before beating Andres Gomez in his seniors match, McEnroe talked Vince Spadea into dropping out of a tournament next week to come to Santender just to try and break into the U.S. singles lineup.

Spadea, he pointed out, had been in the top 20 last year before going on his infamous losing streak. I forget how many matches he lost in a row, but he set a tour record. McEnroe pointed out that Vince might have turned it around beating Greg Rusedki at Wimbledon, that the players still respected Vince and knew he was dangerous, and that his previous ranking was higher than either Gambill or Chris Woodruff had ever been. Other than Todd, Vince actually had the most wins over top 10 players of the possible singles players.

In classic McEnroe fashion, he saw it as a potential once in a lifetime opportunity for Vince to step up and do something big.

Not that he’s even guaranteed playing. My friend also told me John planned on having the potential singles players play something like a series of challenge matches starting Monday in Santender—the two best would likely play the singles.

The doubles? The team would definitely be 2 of these 3 players: Jan-Michael Gambill, Todd Martin, and John McEnroe. Stay tuned.