WIMBLEDON ’87 : His Name Is Now Household Word

How humble is the new overnight sensation of Wimbledon?

While nearly every other player in the tournament has been taking advantage of the daily chauffeur service provided by tournament officials, our new hero has been car-pooling to work on a press shuttle van.

That’s humble, folks. Every day, this guy has sardined himself into the press van with the ink-stained wretches, on their way to Wimbledon to turn out prose in celebration of people such as Boris Becker.

Until Friday, nobody paid Peter Doohan much attention.

On the press van, on the tennis circuit, even in his home country, he was about as obscure as a big-time tennis player can be.

“He’s a five-point man,” one Australian tennis writer said of Doohan, who is ranked No. 70 in the world.

That’s a new expression. Five-point refers to the tiny type in the back pages of the sports section, where the also-rans and insignificant players are listed.

Today, Peter Doohan is a household word, at least in the household of Boris Becker. Doohan beat Becker Friday, 7-6, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4.

When the 2-hour 57-minute match ended, Doohan walked off the court in a daze.

“I didn’t know what the crowd wanted me to do,” he said. “I felt like they wanted something spectacular, but I didn’t know what. I thought I was going to throw the racket into the crowd, but I figured I’d need it for the next match.”

So he merely flipped it into the air.

He was like a second-string linebacker scoring the winning touchdown. This was new territory.

“It hasn’t sunk in at all--the feeling of beating Boris Becker on grass here at Wimbledon,” Doohan said. “It’s going to take a couple of days to sink in.”

Meanwhile, Doohan will become so well known he may have to abandon the daily press bus. The man’s cover has been blown to smithereens.

Until Friday, other than three national hard-court wins in Australia, the 26-year-old Doohan’s major claim to fame was an NCAA doubles championship in 1982, when he was at the University of Arkansas.

If anyone around Wimbledon remembered Doohan, it was as the guy who injured himself last year during a match and had to serve underhand, actually winning a game that way before losing the match.

If Friday’s win wasn’t a victory for the nobodys of the world, there never was one.

Doohan, a fifth-year pro, earned $22,743 last year. By comparison, Boris Becker earned $500,000 for endorsing a brand of tennis strings.

Until Friday, Doohan was Wimbledon lawn furniture, one of the warm bodies trucked in to fill out the huge draw. He wasn’t exactly practicing his trophy acceptance speech.

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t even look past Boris Becker to see who I’d play the next round,” he said.

Doohan, according to the Australian press, is a quiet sort who keeps to himself and travels by himself. Until he was named to the Australian Davis Cup team last year, he was one of those guys who never made any of the national junior teams or national anything teams. He was just another player, a five-point man.

What he did have going Friday was grass-court experience. He had played in seven tournaments this year, six of them on grass.

Still, this was Wimbledon grass, Boris Becker’s home turf.

The question after the match was, was this the fluke of the century, or what?

Ion Tiriac, Becker’s adviser, seemed to lean toward the fluke theory.

“If you canceled the last three hours on the watch,” Tiriac said, “I’m still going to pick him (Becker) out as the winner of Wimbledon.”

What about Doohan?

“Nobody considers he barely beat a cauliflower in the first match,” Tiriac said. “He cannot do it (beat Becker). Closing the eyes and hitting everything in. Congratulations.”

That last word was spoken in scorn, not praise.

Was Doohan playing a mile over his head, as Tiriac and even Becker suggested?

“One of the first things I said when I came off the court was I feel I played within myself, not above myself,” Doohan said.

“I felt fairly confident out there. The thing that really surprised Boris was I kept up the standard for four sets.”

Doohan pointed out that he has drawn some tough early round opponents in his brief career. McEnroe, Connors, Cash, Edberg.

“I suppose on the law of averages, sooner or later you’re going to have one big win,” Doohan said.

“Now I have to prove to everyone that it wasn’t a once-in-a-lifetime win. People probably think it’s a great win, but you’ll never hear from Peter Doohan again.”

For Boris Becker, once was enough.