Davis Cup Journal: Epilogue

Mac’s Gone and Davis Cup is Dead

by John Yandell

Yes it’s official, McEnroe resigned after only one year as Davis Cup captain. I was down in Southern California when I read the news in a Bob Larson Newsletter special email update, a couple of days before it came out in the press. But I didn’t think the news was all that shocking. 

When I started this journal during the Los Angeles Davis Cup tie with the Czech Republic earlier this year, I said I hadn’t really cared too much about Davis Cup since Mac quit playing. For my own selfish—as opposed to patriotic reasons—I decided to start following closely again, because I thought if anyone could bring emotion and significance back to Davis Cup, it was John. 

Let’s face it, love him or hate him, no player has ever electrified the game the way John did. I thought there was a good chance he could translate some of that electricity to the Davis Cup just by osmosis. If John had actually pulled off what he set out to do, it could have been pretty thrilling. Pete and Andre in Australia winning the Cup on grass. That would be coming up two weeks from now! That could have been the scenario. And I would have had to make the trip down under to see it. Spain and Australia in one year sounded good to me.

As it was, we didn’t even come close. I was there in Spain and saw the destruction at close range. Pete and Andre, however, weren’t within 2,000 miles of the place, and neither one phoned in to say either “good luck” or “sorry.”

Hey, I loved the tapas, the flamenco, the red wind, and the quaint medieval towns. And the Royal Society of Tennis—the club that hosted the event—is one of the most beautiful clubs ever, with it’s pristine red clay courts. But the tennis? That was pretty tough to take. There was barely a glimmer of hope going in, and that was smashed after Todd Martin and Jan-Michael Gambill both lost their first singles matches. 

Then you kind of had the impossible dream when the doubles started the next day, if the U.S. could just win that point, anything could happen. Or at least Sunday would put some pressure on the Spaniards. And for a while it looked like Todd and Chris Woodruff might actually stumble through, though they just didn’t play well together. So when the U.S. ended up losing the doubles in 5 sets, my photographer and I bailed and went touring, skipping the final singles matches Sunday.

But we couldn’t fully escape. The Davis Cup was right there on the big screen when we stopped for lunch. And there was John, sitting there on the sideline, watching Jan- Michael and Vince Spadea get a further toasting in two meaningless matches. Man, that was tough to watch for even a few seconds. I have to imagine sitting courtside for the whole thing was one of the more tedious and/or painful experiences of John’s life—or at least his tennis career.

So what happened? What about the Davis Cup dream team? Why did John resign a $300,000 a year job that had been his dream for about 10 years? 

Sally Jenkins, the idiot writer for the Washington Post, took the opportunity to take a cheap shot at John. "Here he was saying that players didn't devote themselves to Davis Cup and then he proved himself right-by doing exactly what he accused them of. He quit because he didn't care about it enough." 

Sally, you may remember, made her career by writing the controversial and glaringly inaccurate cover story for Sports Illustrated a few years back that asked the question: "Is Tennis Dying?" 

This isn't really the time or place to dredge up everything that was mistaken in that piece, but suffice it to say her ability to get the facts right (or lack thereof) remains in tact. 

John McEnroe didn't quit Davis Cup because he didn't care enough. Obviously, it was the opposite, because he cared too much, or just actually cared. And because he knows a no win situation when he sees one. 

After the disaster in Spain, John was heard to say things like "Agassi and Pete stiffed me. Those guys just didn't care." I'm sure he felt that way, but that wasn't the real story. There were just too many other factors at work.

John McEnroe - although I doubt he would see it exactly this way - sacrificed his tour career to play Davis Cup. Remember he won 5 cups and played some of the most unbelievable and emotionally draining matches of all time. Some brutal losses on red clay in South America.  And some incredible wins, like the 5-hour indoor match over Wilander, where he actually let Arthur Ashe hug him after he pulled out the victory.

People forget one of the greatest doubles matches of all time—John’s last Davis Cup match when he and Pete of all people, came from 2 sets down to beat Switzerland and set up the team victory by Courier on Sunday.

I told John recently if he had applied all that energy to the tour, he might have won another 5 Slam titles. I couldn’t get him to agree, but he did say “Yeah I probably would have won a few more tournaments.” You can pretty much bet on that.

But the tour just wasn’t John’s top priority, and he was basically finished as a dominant player in the Slams by the time he was 26.

Now the point of all this is that Pete and Andre are both almost 30. They both seem capable of still winning Slams. Pete got 4 or 5 of his titles after the age of 26. But neither one of them played Davis Cup consistently like John. And if you look at their Davis Cup experience this past year, you can see the toll it took. Great players shouldn’t necessarily be finished in their mid twenties. But honestly, seeing both Grand Slam events and the Davis Cup up close, I don’t see how any of them could fully commit to both without burning out.

Watching Agassi win those 2 singles matches versus the Czechs in LA, I don’t think I have seen more intensity, concentration and focus in a pro match. He was unbelievable; so inspirational. He was incredibly dominant, but he was working so hard with his feet, setting up one shot with another, constructing these incredible geometric points. The guy had a lot of pressure and it never seemed to get to him. In fact, it brought out his best tennis. It was beautiful to see first hand. And when Pete came through to win the 5^th match, well, there was a touch of that old Johnny Mac magic I had been hoping to catch.

But the aftermath was pretty devastating for the future of the 'team'. In retrospect it’s hard to apply that term to the U.S. Davis Cup effort in any meaningful sense of the word. Pete played hurt during the match, and he was really hurting afterwards. I know, because I saw him literally dragging his leg behind him out of the Forum - admittedly with a big smile on his face. But he couldn’t walk. 

So when he limped through yet another injury at Wimbledon to win that amazing 12^th Slam title, it was easy for me to understand why he just didn’t want to risk the next terrible physical event, by going immediately to Spain to play in the heat on red clay. Now some people say he should have gone no matter what, but he’s the only one who knows for sure what that would have done to him. Pete just isn’t the iron man type to start with. And, I’m sorry, I don’t think any athlete should risk severe or possibly chronic injury to compete in any event, period. Whether it was Davis Cup or not isn’t really relevant to that decision.

With Andre the after effects were maybe more mental, even though he had (literally) puked his guts out on the court in Africa during the first round. I’ve often heard him say you can only peak so many times a year. Well, that was a major peak he had there in LA, and you gotta think it took away from his ability to reach that level later in the Slams. Certainly his results the rest of the year would support that conclusion. Then there was the terrible news about his mother and sister. But I’m not sure even if that hadn’t happened, he could have recovered to play his best at the Open. Think about it.  Four Slams and four Davis Cup ties a year. That’s just too many peaks.

With Andre, you can almost always tell in the first few games. If he makes some big unforced errors early, it’s a sign that he’s not ready to go the distance. He gets a kind of vacant look in his eyes that’s obvious when you see him from up close. People don’t realize how much grinding it takes to play his game. He has to hit a lot of balls—even when he finishes the points with big shots and dominates on score. And that takes a deep reservoir of mental energy. You’d have to say a lot more mental energy than with Pete’s game where basically, nobody can return well enough to even challenge his service games when he’s playing well.

I spoke to John after he won the seniors event at Stanford a few weeks ago and told him, despite the way it ended, I didn’t think he had really gotten full credit for the incredible level of energy he put into the whole Davis Cup thing. “Maybe I ought to put that energy somewhere else,” he said in a slow, reflective tone. I was pretty sure right then he was going to quit.

I mean the guy went on Jay Leno and tried to give the world a history lesson about what was great about Davis Cup, and why sports fans should actually care. He did an ungodly amount of other press all the way along. I told him if he had done a fraction of that to promote the video we did together in the 1980’s, we would have both made a million dollars. (Which would have meant more to me than to him, I can assure you.) But he didn’t think that was too funny. I’m sure he thought I was off my ass for comparing some commercial video venture to the Davis Cup.

He also repeated the thing to me about the players just not caring enough, but then I asked him if he didn’t think that really the problem was the schedule. “ Don’t you think there are just too many people and events that all need the players’ energy, and not enough juice in the batteries?”

“Exactly,” he said.

So that looks like it for my little flirtation with the Davis Cup—not that I minded for a minute. My conclusion is it’s basically dead at the world-class level, at least on any kind of consistent basis. One country or another may get the top players together to win in a given year, but you are not going to see the top players from all the countries going head to head very often, if ever. 

Everyone complains about the tour schedule, but that’s not going to change. In fact I believe we’ve added one men’s and two women’s events for 2001. 

I live and breath tennis every day - playing, coaching, writing - but when it comes to the pro tour, I just don’t care after the U.S. Open. Just the other night I channel surfed right by Lindsay Davenport vs. Martina Hingis to watch Dark Angel with Jennifer Alba. It had more dramatic appeal.

I’d made the commitment to go to Australia for Davis Cup final round if the U.S. was in, but now I doubt I’ll even watch it, even though Spain versus Australia on clay is an interesting match up on paper. But to me it’s an anticlimax. Without the top American players and what could have been one of the best American teams ever, it’s just hard to take the whole thing seriously.

John McEnroe has never lacked for confidence, and he was sure he could make the difference, that is, make Davis Cup serious again. I’ve heard a lot of people, including some tour players, criticize him for campaigning so hard to take the job away from Tom Gullickson, and then dropping it so fast. And maybe there’s something to that. But really, what’s the point? Unless America develops some young superstars really fast, and it’s obvious that’s not going to happen anytime soon, the Davis Cup really doesn’t have a chance in this country right now. And even if that happened there’s still the multiple demands on the players and the almost inevitable burnout factor. How’s that good for the game in the long run?

Now I could be wrong and the next captain might get Pete and Andre for every match and take it all the way. But I doubt it. And the long term problems would still be unaddressed and probably insoluble. One thing is for sure, though, it won’t be the same, without McEnroe involved. I just wonder what he is going to do next with all that extra energy.

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