During the obligatory Davis Cup presser at the USTABJKNTC a few weeks ago, I asked Patrick McEnroe what he likes about the team he has since taken to Sweden, in his continuing effort to bring the Davis Cup home (the US has not won since 1995 - the longest dry spell in our DC history, but that's a post for another day). I have to admit I was fishing for a specific answer, and Pat gave it to me as if he'd read my mind:
In a way, this is the real "golden age" of American Davis Cup - or at least it is since the heyday of Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, et al, when we were both good and, well, good. What McEnroe says about Roddick above is spot-on, but it also holds true of the other staples on the squad, James Blake and Bob and Mike Bryan. No matter what angle you come at it from, Davis Cup has never been in better shape in terms of the support it has among top players, the morale of the squad, and even the team's acceptance of the sometimes irritating elements that come with Davis Cup - the ubiquity of USTA and ITF officials, the forced, semi-formal dinners, and the micro-managing that the USTA sometimes practices.
This is a remarkable turnaround, and if we're not longer as dominant a nation, talent and results-wise, we may presently be a nation easier to respect and admire. Just this morning I had been thinking about the ultimate US Davis Cup Dream Team, the squad that went to Gothenburg, around Christmas of 1984, to play the Swedes in the final. The line-up was Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe playing singles, McEnroe and Peter Fleming in doubles, and Jimmy Arias.
Can it get any better than that? (Well, there was that 1992 team that beat Switzerland in the final at Fort Worth, Tx., featuring Jim Courier and Andre Agassi playing singles, and Pete Sampras and John McEnroe in the doubles. . .but never mind.)
In 1984, the Yanks were hardly looking at a cakewalk. The Swedes had Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg, Anders Jarryd and Henrik Sundstrom, and they welcomed the Americans with a slow indoor clay court. In a somewhat surprising move, the Swedes decided to play clay-court expert Sundstrom - who was having the career year of his brief career - in the singles, leaving Stefan Edberg to anchor the doubles. Edberg and Jarryd were one of the great doubles teams of their era, so the McEnroe-Fleming team had plenty to worry about, especially on a slow court that blunted Fleming's huge serve.
Connors, always the relucant Davis Cup competitor (his motto was, There's no "I" in team, I am outta here!), but he reluctantly joined the squad that year for reasons of his own. Back in Los Angeles, Jimbo's wife, Patti, was expecting their second child, so he was somewhat preoccupied. McEnroe was coming off a three-week suspension for having pitched a horrible fit during a tournament just a month earlier, down the road a piece a Stockholm. To further complicate things, those two stars had somewhat uneasy relationships with team captain Arthur Ashe, who seemed to them too straight-laced, insufficiently fiery and supportive, more than a little remote, and too much the USTA company man.
This Dream Team quickly morphed into a Scream Team whose antics sent the international sporting press into an anti-American feeding frenzy. The trouble began before the first ball was even hit, at the opening ceremonies. The US team showed up slovenly and bursting with arrogance; and they chewed gum, cracked jokes and fidgeted around as if they were bored to tears by the proceedings. The entire world was watching.
In the opening match, Connors vs. Wilander, the American came within a hair's breadth of being defaulted for a host of offenses, including repeated, audible obscenities. He was officially censured afterwards, and fined $2000. Connors was edgy from the get-go; Davis Cup always did rub him the wrong way. And on this occasion, he seemed very much like the bad apple that spoiled the whole bunch. Not only did Connors not like Davis Cup, he didn't much like Ashe, either. Before the end of the tie - and this was a short tie - he and Ashe weren't even speaking. They communicated via third parties, perhaps because Ashe spoke good English, while Connors perferred to talk trash.
Wilander was unperturbed by it all the histrionics, perhaps because he was so busy kicking the crap out of Connors that he never really heard Jimmy dropping those F-bombs. Connors got just seven games off the cool, focused Swede. In the second singles, Sundstrom weathered a first set storm, 13-11, and then rolled through McEnroe, 6-4, 6-3. Oddly enough, McEnroe behaved reasonably on court, although he spent the entire weekend with a surly scowl on his face, and managed to offend pretty much anyone who got in his sight-line. By the end of the first day, Connors was booking his flight back to LA and McEnroe was probably helping Jimbo pack his bags - being together in those days tended to bring out the worst in both of them, and neither had any compunctions about taking his insecurities or aggressions out on innocent bystanders, including the millions who watched the matches.
On Saturday, Edberg and Jarryd played superbly to beat McEnroe and Fleming in four sets, ending the tie. The forehands and backhands parts of it, anyway. For the debacle also sparked international outrage, and the representatives of the US Davis Cup sponsor at the time, wood products giant Louisiana-Pacific, were livid. GP president Harry Merlo said he left Gothenburg "embarrassed to be an American."
The controversy took on a life of its own, when GP threatened to pull its sponsorship unless the players signed an official Code of Conduct. The USTA backed GP against the outraged players, who refused to sign and accused GP of "grandstanding". Ashe was caught and, ultimately, ground up in the middle. As a gentleman and model player, he saw the need for something to be done. As the team captain and former player himself, he understood only too well the hubris of the players. The squad members did not back down and neither did the officials. As a result, neither Mac nor Connors played the following year. The depleted US side beat Japan in 1985,, but then lost to Germany when Boris Becker defeated Aaron Krickstein in the fifth and decisive rubber, giving up just five games.
Shortly thereafter, Ashe was fired.
I'm glad Pat McEnroe is unlikely ever to find himself in similar shoes. As a footnote, McEnroe never played singles on a winning team after the debacle in Gothenburg, and the double loss was the only blemish on McEnroe and Fleming's 14-1 record.
Those were glory days, as well as days filled with fear and loathing, for the US Davis Cup teams, and they probably are gone forever. During his press conference, Pat McEnroe was asked if the Davis Cup landscape is changing, not merely because of a dearth of top American stars, but also by way of history or, if you prefer, evolution. He replied:
If you read Ed McGrogan's last Monday Net Post here, you saw the same point made in a different way - Ed talked about some of the teams engaged this weekend in the battle to stay in, or make it into, the elite 16 of the World Group. For all its real or imagined flaws, Davis Cup has never been a better, less predictable, more closely-watched (internationally, at least) event.
The good news for the US squad is that Andy Roddick and James Blake are a collective 13-2 against Sweden's two most highly ranked singles players: Jonas Bjorkman and Thomas Johansson. The only two losses were by Roddick, to Bjorkman. This is a winnable tie for a team that has earned this opportunity to make the final, but as well all know, anything can happen. Especially in Gothenburg.