Alan King Tennis Tournament : On Blistered Feet, Arias Goes Down to Defeat

The tennis courts at Caesars Palace are composed of cement--a special mix, extra hard and extra gritty. During the middle of the day, the sun beats down with a relentless intensity, turning the courts into a massive green-and-white skillet.

These are things that try men’s soles.

For a full week, Johan Kriek and Jimmy Arias had tromped, trod and pounded on these courts, running down enough shots to work their way into the championship final of the Alan King/Caesars Palace tennis tournament. As they readied for their most stringent test--three out of five sets, with $80,000 to the winner--both contestants entered Sunday’s match making the same request:

Feet, don’t fail me now.

For Arias, that proved to be too great a request. After holding up for 11 sets and five tiebreakers through the first four rounds, Arias’ feet broke down in the third set of the final.

Blisters and bleeding toes were the diagnosis. Arias came up limping, and a match that was tied at one set apiece soon swung over to Kriek’s favor.

Kriek, hurting himself, toed the line long enough to turn back Arias in four sets, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-2, before a crowd of 6,423. It was the first tournament victory for Kriek since last summer.

Afterward, Kriek talked about the ecstasy of this long-awaited win . . . and the agony of the feet.

“This is probably one of the very best tournaments I’ve ever had,” he said. “Unfortunately, I have to go and play the Tournament of Champions next week in New York. I may have to pull out, my feet are in such bad shape.

” . . . I was playing with only one pair of socks on and my feet were flopping around in my shoes, really getting chewed up. It’s so damn hot out there, your feet feel like they’re on fire.”

Arias, who did wear several pairs of socks, found this protective measure not much protection. After splitting the first two sets, Arias was trailing, 4-3, in the third before asking for a three-minute injury timeout.

When it required more than three minutes to repair Arias’ toes, chair judge Frank Hammond cited Arias with a conduct warning for delaying the match.

“It’s tennis procedure,” Hammond sympathetically informed the crowd. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

Two minutes later, Arias, finally patched up, returned to the court. But the form he displayed in the first set, when he kept hitting high balls that kept kicking up distractingly in Kriek’s eyes, did not.

Arias lost four of the next six games. By then, he was down two sets to one and three games to one in the fourth set.

It proved to be the final set, too, as Kriek swooped in to take advantage of a wounded foe.

“I let my feet bother me,” Arias said. “I started real well, but when I got the blisters, I lost all concentration. I started thinking, ‘Oh no, my feet are hurting, now I’m gonna lose.’

“That’s when he got on top of me.”

And, as Arias and most of his colleagues on the men’s pro tour know all too well, that’s when Kriek is his most dangerous. Overall, Kriek’s career results have been spotty, but fall behind him early and Kriek is capable of big things--like back-to-back Australian Open titles in 1981 and 1982.

“He plays better when he’s in front and starting to pull away,” Arias said. “You have to get on top of him right away. I had my chances.”

Kriek looked lethargic at the match’s outset, having difficulty with Arias’ not-so-overpowering serve and spraying ground strokes long. He attributed that to fatigue. “I played four matches of tough singles and four matches of tough doubles the last four days,” Kriek said.

But he hung in to break Arias on the eighth game of the second set, won the set a game later, and got the break he needed when Arias’ feet wore out.

Indeed, Arias’ best shot during the latter stages of the match came when he flung a ball at Hammond’s chair while disputing a call in the fourth set. The ball hit a glass near Hammond’s feet and sent ice and water flying at midcourt.

While that might have upset Hammond, it did not throw Kriek off stride. He went on to win the set and match.

And, while a series of upsets caused Kriek not to have to face such players as Jimmy Connors, Yannick Noah, Aaron Krickstein, Pat Cash, Eliot Teltscher and Scott Davis, the victory was impressive.

It was, as fate would have it, a feat his feet would fete.