Boom Boom Almost Went Poof Poof

Sometime after 10 o’clock Tuesday night on the center court of the U.S. Open Clay Court championships here, the German, Boris Becker, who bridles at military applications to his tennis nicknames, needn’t have worried.

At that point, the appropriate German phrase for him seemed to be a simple auf Wiedersehen . Perhaps the only other applicable expression would have been donnerwetter! Although dumkopf would not have been completely out of the question.

Herr Becker, at that precise moment, seemed to be laying the biggest egg ever seen in the sport of tennis. Boom Boom Becker, he was not. Bye Bye Becker was more like it. Schweinehund seemed to be a word Boris himself was reserving for his racket as he periodically smashed it to the ground.

Becker seemed to be contemplating this schweinerei of a tennis match he was embroiled in with the outraged ill humor of a surrounded general. An armistice seemed the only honorable outcome.

Here was the situation: Becker was playing an unseeded player who had been a pro only three weeks, a Swede named Mikael Pernfors from the University of Georgia, who had won the NCAA championship twice but who looked a little like a player who might be nicknamed Bitsy.

His game put nobody in mind of a channel invasion. In fact, some people thought Becker should at least have dropped leaflets before beginning the bombing.

But Pernfors promptly proceeded to break his more celebrated opponent’s serve at will and ran out the first set, 6-4, on guerrilla tactics--hit and retreat and hit. He wasn’t confronting General Becker so much as harassing him.

Playing tennis on clay courts is a little like playing in gumbo, and Pernfors cannily took up his defensive position 10 to 15 feet behind the base line so that when Becker’s booming shots bounced to him, they were as easy to return as balloons.

Pernfors then had a 5-4 lead in the second set and was 40-love on his own serve. Becker’s arsenal had been reduced to rubble, and he seemed only to need a cigarette and a blindfold before dying saluting.

It was a disaster of the first magnitude. The largest crowd ever to see a clay courts match in Indianapolis at night, 7,250, was on hand. The folks weren’t there to see Pernfors act as a human backboard. They were there to see the divebombs.

As theater, it was wonderful. As box office, it was catastrophic. It was like John Wayne getting killed by the Indians in the first reel.

Without Becker, what they would have left here was a cinema verite. They were going to leave the tournament to a whole bunch of guys named Yannick and Guillermo and Andres and to guys whose last names read like a Hungarian menu or a Balkan phone book or an explosion in a typewriter factory. An awful lot of fried chicken would stay unsold if Becker went boom.

The cavalry arrived just in the nick of time. With four match points facing him, Pernfors managed to throw them all away. In his anxiety to close out the upset, he changed his game. He crept in for the kill.

And got killed.

Becker’s hand grenades started going off at Pernfors’ feet instead of harmlessly in front of him.

The U.S. Open Clay Court tournament dodged a bullet. Becker became the boomer again and ran out the match, winning an 18-point tiebreaker for the second set and holding serve for a 6-2 romp in the final set.

But the point was underscored again that clay court tennis is the great equalizer. It turns a game from a slugfest into a boxing match. It’s like a football game in which you never can complete the long pass, a baseball game in which you can’t reach the fences.

Becker serves 20 to 30 aces on the grass at Wimbledon or the hard courts in the rest of the world, but his serves came in like soap bubbles in the gummy landing strips at Indy Tuesday night.

The big game is the big bust on hard mud. Tennists here are like major league baseball players who have to get used to swinging at 100-m.p.h. pitches most of the year, only to suddenly see a lot of changeups, knucklers, screwballs, sliders and spitters.

Power players hit what normally are sure winners--only to see the ball come dinking back softly, like a furry moth. It’s like being gummed to death by your pet poodle. Points are marathons, not one-punch knockouts.

Great players have run screaming into the night after trying to solve the doughy dribbles of this tar pit. John McEnroe gave up after three tries. Bjorn Borg had enough after one. Arthur Ashe never won at Indy, but people with games like Jose-Luis Clerc’s are tigers.

Among the winners are some of the great Who-He’s of the court, although Jimmy Connors has managed four wins and two seconds here.

It’s a little mindful of the great Yank golfer who was going over to play the British Open and was boasting of his monstrous tee shots, his great irons and his strong fairway woods. And the old Scottish pro, listening, only shook his head. “Ye better learn to chip and putt, son,” he advised.

That’s a good idea if you’re going to play clay court tennis, too.