It’s Davis Cup weekend, as you know, so I sat down this morning, put my head on my desk, and began to wrack my brain for just the right You Tube clip to assess. It didn’t take long. If you’ve been following the event over the last couple of decades, particularly the U.S. team, one weekend will likely stick out as special. While it involved our boys getting blitzed off the court by a red-hot home team, it also made for a one-of-a-kind tie filled with the type of berserk collective joy that only Davis Cup can inspire among tennis players and fans. Fifteen years later, Mary Carillo said she could still hear the “music of that weekend.”
I’m referring to the 1991 final, in which the underdog French team, led by Henri Leconte and Guy Forget and captained by Yannick Noah, won their first Cup since the Musketeers had relinquished it nearly 60 years earlier. They beat a U.S. team led by Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi with some of the most inspired tennis—at times it seemed like Leconte was levitating—I’ve ever seen. Then they danced in a conga line. Carillo is right, there was an outpouring of emotion in that tie that has never been replicated in tennis in quite the same way.
The first clip is from Leconte’s opening-day win over Sampras, a 20-year-old Cup rookie. The second, below, is from Forget’s clincher over that same rookie. That weekend, Pistol Pete was the bad kind of goat.
—Last week I posted a clip of another French lefty, Richard Gasquet. Chris Clarey of the International Herald Tribune told me that the first time he heard Gasquet’s backhand, he recognized the sounds but couldn’t place it. Then it came to him: The last time he’d heard strings sound exactly that way was when Leconte ripped his own backhand.
—Leconte is beyond amped. He can’t miss. The running backhand pass is impressive, but even crazier is the kind of accuracy he gets on his crosscourt passes. My memory of this match is that he played this way from start to finish.
—A jumping one-handed swinging backhand volley winner: That’s flair. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that anywhere else.
—Love the short shorts and the long socks. Actually, they look awful.
—Really do love Leconte’s service motion, as quick and smooth as they come. I tried to mimic it as a kid, but hitting your toss just as it reaches its peak, or even a millisecond before, requires incredible timing. Ivanisevic’s motion was a saner version of the same thing.
—Leconte was one of the all-time mercurial talents and perhaps the sport’s greatest buffoon. See him fainting on court here and hurting his back in practice here (what did we do before You Tube?). Leconte had the distinction of being booed by his home crowd after being blown out by Mats Wilander in the final at Roland Garros. Before the match, Leconte had said he would attack Wilander’s second serve. So Wilander decided he wouldn’t hit any second serves. As I recall, he missed two first balls the entire match and won in straights.
—The last game has it all. Leconte trying to breathe. Leconte hitting bullet aces. The French crowd standing in celebration, only to have to sit back down and stand up again.
—In the clip below, we see Forget finishing it off. Looking at it now, I’m shocked Sampras lost to him. Forget was not in the zone to the level of Leconte, and Pete was clearly the stronger player and is dictating most of the play in this final game. (Though when I look at their career head-to-head, Sampras only leads Forget 5-4; he was 2-2 against Leconte, one of the very few players he didn’t own a winning record against.)
—It appears that Forget saves a break point with an outrageous backhand pass, similar to Leconte’s two days earlier. You can see Sampras start to lose it a little after that. He gives a brief look of disgust, but he closes back up and works to keep his concentration. It’s the face of a guy willing himself to be calm, and we’d see it again many, many times.
—Is that Fabrice Santoro in the audience?
—Brief glimpse of Agassi watching despondently. He said during that trip that he couldn’t take the French food he was eating at the Davis Cup banquets, so he went in search of a McDonald’s. It wasn’t enough to keep him from beating Forget on the first day in four sets. If he’d played Leconte in the decider, the scene would have been insane.
—Noah praying before the final point is one of the great moments in tennis.
—Don’t say Sampras caved. Look at his get on the final point, forcing Forget to hit one more ball before he gets to collapse.
—Like I said, this celebration still rings in the ears of everyone who heard it. Watching Noah, you wonder how he was ever sad again. As it was, the French lost in the first round of the 1992 Cup three months later.
—What’s the French word for Rocky?
Have a good weekend