!104216921 By Pete Bodo
On the whole, Patrick McEnroe would have preferred to end his decade-long stint as the U.S. Davis Cup team captain in, say, San Diego, with his side hosting, oh, Belgium. It would have given him the opportunity to smell the roses while sitting in the captain's chair as a Mardy Fish or John Isner thumped his overmatched opponent before an enthusiastic home crowd.
Instead he found himself tiptoeing through a typical Davis Cup minefield in his final tie as captain, in Bogota, Colombia, last week. For the U.S. squad had its back to the wall, facing exile from the elite 16-nation World Group in the event of a loss.
The tie was played in a bullring, at 8,000-plus feet, with stone-like pressureless balls. A heavy police escort accompanied the team wherever it went, and never by the same route twice. Sam Querrey, playing singles, couldn't find the court. The players had a tent instead of a locker room. The effects of the altitude were so intense that Mardy Fish walked around dizzy for his entire first day on site, and nobody slept well. Only two members of the U.S.-based "netheads" fan club found their way to Bogota.
And on top of all that, this obscure Colombian player, Santiago Giraldo, came up pretty big—almost as big, it turned out, as Mardy Fish, the American who won all three matches in which he was involved to secure a narrow win for the U.S..
"It would have been best of all to go out with another win in the Davis Cup final," McEnroe said, laughing, over breakfast today, "But my only real regret is that I didn't get to go out with our fans present. I regret that I didn't get the chance to wave good-bye to them."
It was an emotional swan song for McEnroe, and he found himself welling up with emotion from time to time in Bogota. "I did tear up a few times there," he admitted. "I was thinking about all the experiences and situations we'd been through, and savoring that feeling of what it's like to walk out there in a jacket that said USA on the back."
But it seems like every time something like that happened, reality intruded. Mardy Fish would come over on the change-of-ends, plop down, and hiss: "I hit that last backhand as well as I possibly can, and it went into the net. The bottom of the net."
And in classic Davis Cup and typically McEnrovian fashion, the captain would just say: "You've got to get in this (Giraldo) guy's kitchen. This guy doesn't want to think, he wants to just roll through these points, forcing the error because he knows how to play these conditions to the hilt. But this guy does just one thing. He does it well, but he can't hurt you with it. Don't get sucked into playing his game, and at his pace. Use all the stuff you've got, mix it up."
For ten years now, McEnroe has said things like that to a wide variety of players, ranging from Jared Palmer to Sam Querrey. And now it's over.
It was fitting that Fish emerged as the titan of this tie. He's been a loyal Davis Cup volunteer since the beginning of his career. But because of the other available talent, he was never handed the ball and told, "Go win this thing for us." Sometimes, he wasn't even handed the ball, and he endured the sometimes grating task of sitting on the bench, cracking his knuckles, without discontent.
This time, McEnroe handed him the ball and spoke those words that every player longs to hear, and Fish did not disappoint his captain. After Fish won a tense five-setter to launch the tie, Querrey, the No. 2 singles player for the Americans, was bushwhacked by the wily Girlado. Querrey could barely find the court in the second singles, and played right into Girlado's hands by alternately going for too much or too little.
Querrey lost in straights, and McEnroe knew it was unlikely that his No. 2 man would regain his confidence in the event he was impelled to play a decisive fifth rubber. Consulting with Fish, McEnroe decided to shoot the moon. "Let's go for the win tomorrow with you and John (Isner) in doubles. And if you empty the bucket in doubles we can always have John (Isner) play the reverse singles."
As it turned out, Fish and Isner had a comfortable doubles win, setting Fish up for his hero moment in the fourth rubber, a meeting of the two No. 1s. Fish beat Girlado 8-6 in the fifth.
The win was emblematic of McEnroe's tenure and attitude as captain. He's always put an enormous emphasis on the ability of any given player to compete—to forget all the negatives and unexpected or unusual conditions and. . . fight. It was one of the reasons McEnroe developed such a close, enduring relationship with Andy Roddick.
"I told Mardy, after he won, 'This is huge for the U.S., but what I’m really proud of is how well you handled everything.' Five, six, years ago, Mardy would have been a basket case in those circumstances. But even though the crowd was whistling and yelling between Mardy's serves, he was like, 'This crowd's not that bad . . .' That's the thing with Mardy, he's really become a professional.
"Mardy was serving great last week, but he would miss three serves in a row by just inches and he’d say, 'I would have bet my life that serve was in. . .' It was all because of the conditions. Sure he got pissed and frustrated, but it never affected what he was trying to do, or how he competed. It may not have looked like he was playing well, but trust me—the conditions were brutal. Girlado was the only guy who really understood how to use those conditions to his advantage.
"Girlado started that match without missing a ball. The first set was over in like 18 minutes. Mardy was struggling. But then he had a tough hold to even it at 1-all in the second, and he just looked over at Girlado and yelled, 'Come on!' He just stared him down. And I felt it then—alright, this is going to be a a match. This is going to be a war. And that’s when Girlado started missing some shots.
"Mardy was bringing it all in, the way Giraldo was playing, and figuring it out and accepting it. He didn't lose his cool. There was none of this whining, 'This guy is BS, this isn't real tennis, these conditions suck. I can't play like this. . .' There's a million excuses, really. But Mardy is so professional now. And you saw the results. It was one of the great efforts in U.S. Davis Cup history."
I keep thinking that this was somehow a legacy match for McEnroe. No, the U.S. didn't win the Davis Cup in a blaze of glory in his final tie as captain, over a glamorous squad before a riveted global audience. The Americans won a World Group playoff tie, against a relative have-not, far off the radar screen of big-time tennis. On paper, the match held little to suck in most fans. If it were a job instead of a Davis Cup tie, it might have been repairing a water-main break on a frigid January day. Nasty. Cold. In some ways thankless but also critical, and demanding full attention and care. Something that had to be done, with a lot more at risk than there was to gain.
McEnroe went about the captaincy with comparable diligence through his entire 10-year tenure and often teased comparably inspired performances out of his players. Given the decline of the U.S. as a tennis power, and the high Davis Cup standard it set back in the glory days, every tie McEnroe captained somehow seemed critical; every round called for the wise, informed delegation of limited resources. The U.S. was stretched pretty thin through his captaincy, and it remains so. But McEnroe grew accustomed to working within those parameters, and doing so made him a masterful tactician and an outstanding motivator of men. There are no records kept for team spirit, but if there were, McEnroe's record as captain would be even better.
I'm glad that Patrick and the go-to guys who were so loyal to him got to taste the nectar when they won the championship in 2007, over Russia, in Portland, Ore. McEnroe never had a "dream team." He merely had dreams, and he was able to make his players dream along with him, win or lose.
Somebody has a tough act to follow.