FLACH & SEGUSO : DOUBLE-EDGED : Seoul Is Another Stop on Victory March for This Premier Tennis Team

Just because Americans Ken Flach and Robert Seguso have gone through most of their tennis careers in tandem--making a name for themselves as the world’s premier doubles team--doesn’t mean they are in unison on everything.

For instance, the Olympic Games.

One is looking forward to participating. The other? Well, you might say he isn’t too excited . . . at least not yet.

“It’s going to cost me a lot of money,” said Seguso, who does his work for the team of Flach and Seguso on the forehand side. “If I lose in the semifinals (at Seoul), it’s not going to benefit me or help me.

“Maybe I’m kind of moping around because it’s been such a long year. Maybe when I’m there in line, marching around, it will all change. But I’m not as excited as I thought I’d be. If it was in L.A., it would be great.”

Flach, who tries to convert break points on the left or ad side, looks at the Games from another viewpoint.

“It’s definitely the biggest sporting event in the world,” he said. “As a tennis player, it never crossed my mind going in that we’d be playing in the Olympics someday.”

Then there’s the way Flach and Seguso--who are preparing for the U.S. Open, which begins here Monday--view the Games in comparison to Grand Slam events and Davis Cup competition. One approaches the possibility of winning a gold medal as a career highlight, ahead of everything else. The otherlooks at the gold as just that, keeping an eye fixed on endorsement possibilities.

“We’ve done everything else. The Olympic gold medal would just be another notch in our belts,” Seguso said. “Second wouldn’t do anything for me; only the gold would.”

Said Flach: “My personal feeling is that a gold medal would be ahead of everything else. I think having a gold to show to my grandkids, it would be something special.”

Both, however, are in agreement in their dislike for the site, Seoul.

To Flach and Seguso, anywhere outside the boundaries of the United States might be greeted with this saying: “It’s not a nice place to visit, and I sure don’t want to live there.”

“I’m American and I’m real fond of the States,” Flach said. “I think going outside the States is a step down. As far as Asian cities go, Seoul is real clean, just like Tokyo. It’s not dirty like Taipei.”

Said Seguso: “It wouldn’t be that bad if it’s somewhere else, but you don’t want to go there (Seoul). You keep hearing things . . . and it’s such a pain where we are living. Because of things (the political unrest) over there, we’re not going to bring the baby, either. Carling (Bassett-Seguso) and I are going to be in this family village. It’s going to cost me about $5,000.”

These are hardly starving tennis players, though. Seguso, playing a full schedule of singles and doubles, made $367,022 last year, and his wife made $67,259. At the Olympics, Bassett-Seguso will represent Canada in singles, and Seguso will just play doubles with Flach.

The singles members of the U.S. team are Tim Mayotte and Brad Gilbert, neither of whom played in the two Davis Cup matches this year. Andre Agassi will be playing at a tournament in Los Angeles rather than Seoul. Last December, when the team was selected, Agassi wasn’t even in the top 10, let alone the top 20, and now he’s the best U.S. player at No. 4 in the world.

So, oddly enough, Flach and Seguso are the only first-stringers going to Seoul. With Boris Becker, Stefan Edberg and Mats Wilander in the singles draw, Mayotte and the struggling Gilbert are outside shots for a bronze medal, at best. Meanwhile, the two-time defending Wimbledon doubles champions, Flach and Seguso, will head to South Korea as solid favorites for the gold.

Tom Gorman, the U.S. Davis Cup captain and Olympic coach, agrees with that assessment. After all, he has watched them come back in such varied locales as Paraguay, Mexico, Argentina and Peru, among others.

“Their record the last two years in big matches is really pretty phenomenal,” Gorman said. “They’ve won two Wimbledons. They’ve never lost a Davis Cup match. They had match points to win the U.S. Open last year. Robert won the French Open with (Anders) Jarryd in 1987. They are a proven good match team.”

All this winning has made Flach and Seguso the names in the world of doubles. Players such as Ivan Lendl can sometimes win matches on the intimidation or reputation factor; likewise, Flach and Seguso figure they have won some by merely walking on the court.

“I think they kind of have an air about them,” said Rick Leach, who, with partner Jim Pugh, beat Flach and Seguso to win a tournament recently in Indianapolis.

“They walk on the court and they have an air of confidence. You can just see it because they have so much experience and have won so many matches under pressure.”

Flach says experience is their biggest asset.

But Seguso, joking, said, “It’s luck.”

Both are right, to some degree. They have plenty of experience, going back to playing at Southern Illinois in Edwardsville. And, really, it was pure luck that Flach and Seguso attended the school. Neither had a high school diploma, so both players went Division II because they would have had to sit out a year at a Division I school.

The odd thing is that Flach and Seguso didn’t get together right away, although they were the two strongest players. Their coach decided to split them up for the sake of depth. A year later, Flach and Seguso joined forces and went undefeated, leading Southern Illinois to three consecutive Division II national championships. Flach, who never lost to Seguso in college, won three singles titles.

Flach said they haven’t played each other in the pros since 1984, when Seguso beat him, 6-4, in the third set in Taipei. If both reach the third round at the U.S. Open, they will meet again. Seguso will play Michael Kures in the first round, and Flach, much to his delight, will face No. 12-seeded Guillermo Perez-Roldan of Argentina, who is excellent on clay courts and so-so on everything else.

“That guy . . . he gets the luckiest draw in the U.S. Open,” Seguso said of Flach.

Last year, Flach reached the round of 16 with victories over Lawson Duncan, Darren Cahill and Emilio Sanchez before he lost to Wilander. Like Perez-Roldan, Duncan and Sanchez are best-known for their success on clay.

Flach is No. 94 in the world in singles, 40 spots behind Seguso. The highest Seguso has been ranked is 22nd, and Flach’s best is 56th. Considering their doubles status, this is interesting, because other successful U.S. players on successful teams such as Stan Smith-Bob Lutz and John McEnroe-Peter Fleming held top 10 singles rankings during their careers.

“I think if we keep doing well in Davis Cup and win maybe, oh, five more (Grand Slam tournaments), I would think when people come down to it, thinking about the best doubles teams, we’d be right there,” Seguso said. “I think McEnroe-Fleming were the best team ever; they did so many things. I’m sure we’ll go down like Smith and Lutz if we keep it up.”

Said Flach: “We’re only 25. I think in another five years, if we can continue to have the success we’ve been having, I think we’re going to be right in there with those names.”

The Flach and Seguso winning way of doubles centers around Flach’s excellent return of serve from the ad court, Seguso’s big serve and, yes, hand signals before every first serve. Both wonder why other teams don’t use this system.

“It’s just like a catcher calling the pitch,” said Flach, an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan. “Nine of 10 times he (the server) knows where he’s going. If you don’t like the call, you can shake the net man off. But most of the time, we know where we want to go.”

Even between changeovers, Flach and Seguso know exactly where they want to go. Flach, who doesn’t believe in stepping on a line on the court, always grabs the chair farthest from the chair umpire. Which has led Seguso to always take the chair closest to the umpire, even when he plays with others.

“If I win my first singles match, I’ll always take the same shower until I lose,” Seguso said. “If a guy is in my shower, I’ll wait till he gets out. When I play with someone else, I always walk on the court first so he won’t take the inside chair. You get a certain kind of feeling. If you do something different, you feel like you might lose.”

These days, Seguso isn’t playing with anyone else. He left Flach and played with McEnroe in the spring of 1987 in one event and planned to team with McEnroe for the French Open. When McEnroe fell in the first round of singles, he left Seguso out in the cold, opting to come back to Los Angeles to watch the Lakers. Then Seguso found happiness with Jarryd, and surprise, the two had instant success as they won the French title.

At Wimbledon, Seguso suggested to Flach that a reunion might be in order. Flach, swallowing his pride, said yes. And he and Seguso won Wimbledon, rallying from a two-set deficit to beat Spain’s Sergio Casal and Sanchez in the final.

“Maybe we learned things from it,” Flach said. “About what we wanted and where we were headed. It woke us up. I think we had got into a rut because we had been playing together so long.”

Seguso never intended the separation to become permanent.

“It got our eyes open,” Seguso said. “We were getting lazy. That was mainly the reason I did it. It had been happening over six months. So I said, ‘Maybe we should split up.’ I always knew I was going to go back to him. I just wanted to get his butt going. I thought I had to do something.

“Besides I like playing with an American. I could play with Jarryd anytime. He said, ‘Anytime, give me a call.’

“But it’s good to play with an American because of Davis Cup and . . . well, we’re known as Flach and Seguso.”