Davis Cup Journal: part 6

Final Thoughts

by John Yandell

I was on a plane from Madrid to London heading home and reading my first English newspaper in a week, the London Daily Mail, when I saw a small blurb in the sports that McEnroe might be fined $10,000 for skipping the press conference, after the Spanish finished their 5-0 Davis Cup sweep on Sunday.  

Well, I wondered how the reverse singles had gone, but like I said, after the U.S. lost the doubles, we’d decided to do something else with our last day in Spain besides follow tennis. So I got to the beach early at around 10am and took that Atlantic swim. The Santender beaches are beautiful, with very fine light brown, pinkish sand, and the water’s perfectly clear, cold, and quite bracing. There’s something purifying for me about swimming in the Atlantic. Sometimes I’m actually calm for hours afterwards. (Just ask anyone who knows me, that’s unusual.) 

I’ve also revised my view of Santender, somewhat. We found some beautiful old houses, beach mansions really, and an incredible 5 star hotel, a white chateau with about 5 acres of grounds, set on a hill overlooking the sea. Actually we had tried to book it but they were sold out 3 months in advance. It would have been nice. We ended up in the USTA media hotel, which is a very ugly, soulless, previously new and modern hotel, which is now merely very ugly and soulless, but does have the advantage of being a 5 minute walk from the stadium. 

That contrast shows exactly what this town is like. There’s this crust of crowded, ugly modern buildings growing like barnacles over the beauty of the old city, clogging it up. It’s not exactly a young people’s town either, I was hoping for more beautiful young flesh on the beach, but it seemed like the average age was about 50. That’s the same walking down the promenades. Then again, maybe I just didn’t find the right beach. 

One thing I really grew to like though was the “Royal Society of Tennis,” the club that hosted the event. It’s a club with grand old style: polished wood floors, real Persian rugs, wood paneling, green lamp shades. A former Spanish monarch, whose name and number escapes me, founded it. He had a royal summer palace out at the tip of the peninsula - another of the great old buildings here - and apparently he was an avid player. 

Despite the fact we weren’t members, we had no problem hanging out and eating at the bar. There’s a lovely veranda that runs the length of the club where you can sit outside with a great view of  the 5 pristine red clay courts. They treat those courts right - water them, drag them, and sweep them every couple of hours - and it shows. They’re perfect. 

The level of the club players was pretty high and pretty intense. It really made me want to get out there and demonstrate that someone could actually do damage on clay with classical grips (contrary to what had been happening to the attacking style American players next door at the stadium) even if it was at the club level. 

Anyway, after the beach we went over to the tennis and picked up the rest of the Advanced Tennis equipment. The matches had started. There was still a large crowd and they were surprisingly into it. As promised, Vince Spadea was playing the first match for the U.S. and the Spaniards had substituted John Carlos Ferrero. I asked one of the TV techs - Spadea was down a break in the first. 

I had a little twinge and thought, well, you know I could go in and shoot Ferrero for ProStrokes…  But we hadn’t been credentialed for that, and we had already decided to head up to this incredible old Spanish town called Santillana, so I grabbed the tripods and got back in the car. 

The old towns in Spain are great, by the way. We went to Toledo while we were in Madrid, an old walled city that is pretty much in tact from the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  The stone buildings and streets are incredibly beautiful. The cathedral is one of the largest in Europe. And it’s packed with religious art and sculpture. The Spaniards were (are?) really into the crucifixion and the resurrection, and just can’t seem to display enough depictions. 

Santillana has a large number of intact actual family residential houses built by various knights and nobles from that same 17^th century period. The simple stone construction with the flowers in the windows - it’s timelessly beautiful.  

I also paid a visit to one of the more bizarre museums ever, devoted to the history of torture, with an emphasis on the tools of the Inquisition. Compared to being broken with the wheel, a favorite medieval public spectacle, apparently, or being impaled by spikes when they close you up in the iron maiden, well, I guess what happened to our Davis Cup team was, relatively, not all that bad. 

We had lunch in a café and they had the tennis on a big screen TV. Vince had split the first two sets and was battling it out in the third. But I never did hear the scores, or even who played the last match. I’m assuming Jan Michael Gambill played Juan Balcells, who was supposedly rewarded for his doubles triumph with a singles spot, or maybe it was Costa again. 

During the matches I did watch, I just couldn’t help but think what it would have been like, how much more intense, if Pete or Andre, or better yet, both, had shown up. Being in that stadium, I really understood, for the first time, one of the things that attracted McEnroe to Davis Cup. 

In an early press conference he said something like, “You see a crowd like that, 10,000 people, you want to get out there and play.”  He kept coming back to the same point, mentioning how he explained to the players that you rarely get to play in front of a crowd that is so partisan and into it. Interestingly, he didn’t seem to care too much who the crowd was for, it was the energy he was after. Add Pete and/or Andre, and it would have been too great. 

After reading the story in the London paper, I wondered why he skipped the press conference. Maybe he had a plane to catch. Maybe sitting there watching 5 losses, including two meaningless reverse singles matches, was just too grim. Maybe he wanted to get out of town so badly, the chance of a $10K fine seemed like a small price to pay.  Or maybe he knew he was likely to be rather impolite to the press in the face of the usual tiresome questions he’s heard a million times, and decided to avoid a potential Mac “incident.” Who knows? 

Which brings me to the future of the Davis Cup in American tennis. Pete and Andre told him they were going to be with him this year. Isn’t that ultimately why the USTA got rid of Tom Gullickson and brought in John? Now, if he can’t get them on the court, who can?  McEnroe seems to be withholding his own verdict on that question. He said the other day he’s not sure if it’s bad luck or he just doesn’t make a difference. 

But maybe it’s something else. How about the out of control, insane, year round pro tennis schedule? The top players have to play the Slams and the SuperNines. That’s 13 events.  To win a Slam is 7 matches. The others are either 5 or 6 matches each. If you add in Davis Cup, that’s another 8 matches for singles alone, not to mention the potential of some hellish travel destinations - remember Zimbabwe? So if you’re winning that could be 75 matches or more in a year. Not to mention the other pro events below the SuperNine, many of which have long established histories of attracting top players. The Sybase Open and the Bank of the West, right in our own Bay Area for example. 

Maybe Pete and Andre were both too hurt to play or maybe they felt they were risking serious injuries if they did play, especially versus the Spaniards on clay. Or maybe they just didn’t have the mental and emotional energy to want it, regardless of some basically good intentions. That would be understandable to me. 

Just look at McEnroe’s career. He didn’t win a slam past the age of about 25. Pete and  Andre are pushing 30. Both of them have played significant Davis Cup matches. But neither was like John. I looked it up and his singles record in Davis Cup was 41-8 (which by the way is the record). That’s the equivalent of winning about 6 more Grand Slams. (Which, interestingly, would have tied him with Pete at 13)  And he played doubles, remember, and since he won everything in doubles that almost doubled the total matches. Eventually all that tennis had to take a toll. Perhaps if he hadn’t been so emotionally committed to Davis Cup he might have stayed at the top longer.  

Anyway, that’s all speculation. But one thing is for sure, a lot of interest groups own little pieces of the pro tennis world that they would be very unlikely to give up willingly. If it was decided that eliminating the Sybase Open was best for tennis, how do you think that would play in the Bay Area, or with Barry MacKay, or the San Jose Arena, which now owns the event? People talk all the time about how tough the schedule is, but they can’t even reduce Davis Cup to once every 2 years like the Ryder Cup, which is a much bigger world media event anyway. And the Ryder Cup takes only one week, not four!  

So I guess time will tell more of the story. Will Mac keep going? Will the top Americans play regularly, and if they do, with what results and at what cost to themselves? I was really hoping for some kind of high powered adrenaline ride all the way to the finals in Australia, but that was just selfish on my part. But, you know what? If it really does ever happen the way Johnny Mac envisions, I hope I can be there to see it. 

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