Tennis / Thomas Bonk : These Two Swiss Look Like ‘Can’t-Miss’

It’s beginning to look as if the neutral Swiss are anything but neutral when it comes to tennis.

Mark Rosset, 18, may be the world’s best junior player. Rosset became the first Swiss to win Miami’s Orange Bowl tournament, the unofficial world junior championships.

A couple of weeks before Rosset’s triumph, countryman Jakob Hlasek became the first Swiss to compete in the Nabisco Masters in New York, where he beat Ivan Lendl and Andre Agassi in early matches and was lauded as a national sensation.

Hlasek, who was born in Czechoslovakia, was already the first Swiss to win consecutive Grand Prix tournaments and also the first to be ranked in the world’s top 10, jumping from 23 to 8. Hlasek’s matches in New York were televised on the three national Swiss channels, in the country’s three official languages, German, French and Italian.

Although Hlasek has a reputation for modesty, it did not stop him from posing shirtless, flexing his muscles, in a photograph for Switzerland’s leading sports newspaper.

Rosset, ranked 474th in the world, may be the Swiss successor to Heinz Gunthardt, who made an international splash in 1976 when he won major junior tournaments at Rome, Paris and Wimbledon. Although Rosset won minor junior events at Klosters, Switzerland, and Florence, Italy, last year, he lost in the first round of his first Grand Prix event in his hometown of Geneva in September.

Since he grew 6 inches, to 6 feet 4 inches, in 1988, some Swiss ascribe Rosset’s defeats to mere growing pains. Rosset plans to train this year with George Deniau, who also coaches Hlasek and the Swiss Davis Cup team.

In the tennis racket racket, Mats Wilander, the No. 1 player in the world, has been dropped by Rossignol and Andre Agassi has signed a 5-year, $6-million deal with Donnay, which used to supply rackets to Bjorn Borg.

Rossignol, the French sporting goods company, has supplied Wilander with tennis racquets since 1982, but broke off discussions with him, apparently because of his new contract demands. Donnay, a Belgian manufacturer, has also reportedly approached Wilander.

Donnay was declared bankrupt with debts of $38 million in August, but French businessman Bernard Tapie took over the company.

A spokesman for Donnay said Agassi will use a racket specially designed for him.

At a ceremony dedicating the clubhouse court at La Quinta to Ellsworth Vines, another tennis legend spoke of his admiration for Vines, who won Forest Hills in 1931 and 1932 and Wimbledon in 1932.

“I admired him,” Jack Kramer said. “He dressed like Fred Astaire and hit like Babe Ruth.”

As expected, there has been fallout in Sweden from that country’s shocking upset by West Germany in the Davis Cup final.

Swedish team captain Hans Olsson quit despite having led Sweden to 3 Davis Cup titles since 1984. Olsson was replaced by John-Anders (Jonte) Sjogren, who coaches Mats Wilander.

Why did Olsson quit? He listed time pressures and an unwillingness to travel with the team as his reasons, but they may not have been the major ones.

Olsson came under heavy criticism when the Swedish Davis Cup team lost to a West German team headed by Boris Becker, 4-1. The loss particularly stung Sweden because it occurred to a team led by Wilander, the world’s No. 1 player who had won 3 Grand Slam events, and Stefan Edberg, who had won the other at Wimbledon.

What’s more, the Swedes lost indoors, on clay and at home at Goteborg. In unprecedented behavior, Swedish fans booed Olsson when he announced that his team was defaulting the last singles match because of injuries.

Sjogren is a former trainer for the Davis Cup team and has been working with Wilander since 1981. He told Swedish radio that he hoped to contribute enough to the team “so that we can win the Davis Cup in 1989.”

Tennis Notes

The Adidas Invitational tournament will be played Jan. 25-29, at Hyatt Grand Champions in Indian Wells. The singles winner in the 48-player draw and the winning doubles team will advance directly into the main draw at the Newsweek Grand Champions, March 13-19. The event is open to college players, junior national team members and others. Collegians who have since turned pro won the first 2 tournaments. Robby Weiss, then playing for Pepperdine, won last year’s event. Scott Davis, who was playing for Stanford, won the year before.

Pam Shriver has entered the Virginia Slims of Indian Wells, which will be played March 6-12. Chris Evert had already entered the 28-player singles draw. . . . Roscoe Tanner, who has never appeared in a movie, has apparently worked out a pretty good deal for his debut in “The Suzanne Lenglen Story.” Milton Kahn, Tanner’s publicist, said that Tanner will be paid $150,000 and will get “special guest star” billing for the Chateau Productions feature to be filmed at Cannes and London next summer.

The first Hopman Cup, an international mixed tournament, attracted eight countries to Perth, Australia, and was considered a success, even though the U.S. did not compete. More than 40,000 people watched the 7 matches played in 5 days in a 7,500-seat indoor arena called the Superdome. There were men’s and women’s singles and mixed doubles matches. Czechoslovakia won the Cup and $100,000 in prize money. Helena Sukova beat Hana Mandlikova, and Sukova and Miloslav Mecir beat Mandlikova and Pat Cash. The men’s singles was canceled because Cash got sick. . . . The Superdome is part of the $285-million Burswood Resort Casino. The event may become popular as a warmup to the Australian Open, because it is played on the same Rebound Ace surface.