Tennis : Fans Criticize Drysdale and Wade for Rebuking Connors on Air

Once, while Ilie Nastase was losing his composure on the court, television commentator Cliff Drysdale thought the best way to handle the situation was to make a joke.

When Nastase offered his trademark gesture, holding his middle finger in the air, for the crowd and television audience to view, Drysdale saw an opening.

“I was so horrified, I tried to make a joke of it,” Drysdale said the other day. “I said he was motioning to a maitre d’ in the crowd. And that he was asking for a table for one.”

That time, in Drysdale’s opinion, humor was the best route. However, more recently, Drysdale took a different stance when Jimmy Connors went off on an expletive-laced, five-minute tirade in his semifinal match against Miloslav Mecir on March 25 in the International Players Championship at Key Biscayne, Fla.

Said Drysdale, on the air: “What I find appalling is that there is no additional action taken by (chair umpire) Rich Kaufman against Connors because of the language. That is inexcusable to me.”

Virginia Wade, who was working with Drysdale in the booth, didn’t shy away from offering her opinion later. “It’s absolute nonsense for Connors to think the umpire is biased,” she said.

The two former players handled the delicate situation in a dignified, responsible manner as they offered honest and deserved criticism.

Surprisingly, the fallout from the incident wasn’t totally directed at Connors. Rather, Wade and Drysdale received their share . . . from the viewers--and it wasn’t positive. According to ESPN spokeswoman Diane Lamb, the cable sports network received about 25 calls and all but one criticized Wade and Drysdale. Some even went so far as to say that the two were anti-American for rebuking Connors. Wade, a former Wimbledon singles champion, is a Briton; Drysdale is from South Africa.

Drysdale also was seemingly the direct and indirect recipient of Connors’ wrath. After Connors lost to Mats Wilander in the final, he refused to do a postmatch interview with ABC, which carried the men’s and women’s finals. Although the interviewer would have been Arthur Ashe, Drysdale believed that Connors refused to talk to ABC’s Ashe because of what Drysdale said two days before on ESPN. Also, during a smaller confrontation in the final with the chair umpire, Connors made disparaging references to “those people up in the booth.”

Thus, several days later, with the benefit of hindsight, Drysdale was asked whether he would have done or said anything differently.

“I stand by what I said,” Drysdale said. “ . . . I can only call it like I see it. If he’s allowed to get away with it, the sport has got a problem.”

Drysdale did, however, have one regret. He had wanted to make a comment in regard to Kaufman’s reluctance to invoke a stiffer penalty, beyond the initial warning and point penalty for delay of game. Perhaps, in Drysdale’s opinion, Kaufman remembered what had happened to Jeremy Shales, who had been in the chair when Connors had another controversial match at the Players tournament and eventually defaulted the match two years ago. Shales was subsequently relieved of his duties as a traveling chair umpire with the men’s tour.

“Maybe he (Kaufman) was afraid the same thing would have happened to him that happened to Shales,” Drysdale said. “I regret not saying it. I felt it might be a reason for him being as easy as he was on him (Connors).”

Either way, Drysdale isn’t hoping for a next time anytime soon.

“It’s the toughest thing in what I do,” he said of commentating on situations like the Connors’ blowup. “It’s the most difficult thing to know how to react, and to react spontaneously and to be fair to all of the parties involved.”

Diplomatic snafu: The West German response was swift--and angry--when the Italian daily Corriere Della Sera recently took an unwarranted shot at the world’s No. 1 player, Steffi Graf, describing her this way: “German, blonde and very ugly.”

So, the German paper Springer Bild Am Sonntag took issue with the insult, saying: “We will publish the names of Germans who will not vacation on the Adriatic until Steffi receives an apology from the Italians through official channels.”

Earlier this year, in Milan, Italy, Yannick Noah discussed the inherent danger of having your remarks translated. Once, when Noah was playing a tournament in Brazil, a reporter asked him whether he liked the Brazilian beaches and the girls.

“I told him that if one didn’t like the beaches and the girls here, one had to be homosexual,” Noah said. “The interpreter made a mistake and told everyone I didn’t like the beaches and the girls because I was a homosexual. The next day every paper in Brazil carried the headline: ‘Noah--I am a homosexual.’ ”

Tennis Notes

Last month, former Davis Cup captain Dennis Ralston was named a national coach for the United States Tennis Assn.’s player development program. Ralston coached at Southern Methodist University for eight years until his recent resignation, and he also has worked with Chris Evert and a number of top male players. Also, joining Ralston and Stan Smith--who was named earlier as a director of coaching--is Benny Sims Jr. Sims, a former All-American at Texas Southern, has been the tennis pro at the Longwood Cricket Club for the last six years. Smith, Ralston and Sims are involved in a program that has been designed to help the development of U.S. junior players. . . . The U.S. Professional Tennis Assn. will be host of a teachers’ workshop on April 17-18 at La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club. This workshop is to prepare non-members for the USPTA certification test in addition to allowing members to improve their professional rating. The fee is $30 for USPTA members and $50 for non-members who pre-register.

Women’s college update: Florida, which reached the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. team semifinals last year, is the No. 1-ranked women’s team in the latest poll. Defending champion Stanford is second, USC third and UCLA fourth. Also, two other teams from California are ranked in the top 15--Cal (No. 5) and Pepperdine (No. 15). The top four individuals are Stanford junior Eleni Rossides, Miami senior Ronni Reis, Texas senior Anne Grousbeck and Florida freshman Halle Cioffi. Cioffi, from Knoxville, Tenn., defeated Zina Garrison in a tournament at Tampa, Fla., last week. USC freshman Trisha Laux, ranked No. 6, is the top local player. . . . In the men’s individual rankings, the top four are Pepperdine senior Robby Weiss, Pepperdine sophomore Andrew Sznajder, Tennessee senior Shelby Cannon and USC senior Scott Melville. . . . ESPN will lift its coverage of tennis a notch with the addition of commentator Mary Carillo. Her first event for ESPN will be a women’s tournament at Amelia Island, Fla., on April 16-17.