Chang, Agassi Wrap Up U.S. Sweep of Paraguay in Davis Cup

To the U.S. Davis Cup team, aside from Michael Chang and Andre Agassi, Sunday was just a day of fun in the sun before a supportive capacity crowd of 5,500 here.

The Americans had clinched this first-round world group matchup Saturday, when Ken Flach and Robert Seguso won the doubles for the third point of the best-of-five encounter against Paraguay.

And much of the talk around the host Sonesta Sanibel Harbour Resort was about what was ahead for this team, namely its April 7-9 quarterfinal against France in the San Diego Sports Arena.

The only real business of the day was to entertain the fans, and that wasn’t all that crucial because they did a good job of entertaining themselves by basking in the hot Florida sunshine and holding up signs for television cameras that said: “+80 Wind-Chill Factor.” Certainly those parts of the country suffering through freezing temperatures were less than amused.

The matches played and won by Chang and Agassi, the American teen-agers who had gotten their team off to a 2-0 start Friday in a fairly pressure-packed situation, were a nice sideshow to the fun in the sun. Even though how they did wouldn’t affect the team, it mattered to Chang, 16, and Agassi, 18.

Chang beat the fabled Hugo Chapacu, who somehow won the first set, 7-5, and then played as if he planned to live forever off his heroic victory over Jimmy Arias in 1987. Chapacu lost the next sets, 6-0, 6-1, in the shortened best-of-three-set match, appearing so excited about the whole thing that he even bothered to chase down five or six of Chang’s shots during the last 13 games. The only surprise when it was over was that Chapacu’s shirt was wet.

Agassi won, 6-2, 6-4, over Francisco Gonzalez, who replaced the injured and out-of-shape Victor Pecci for the singles finale. Unlike Chapacu, Gonzalez tried hard. Like Chapacu, it probably didn’t matter anyway.

After their victories completed the 5-0 sweep, Chang and Agassi explained why this all really had mattered. Chang’s reason was fairly logical. Agassi’s was, well, vintage Agassi.

Chang said: “I felt pressure to win today. Here’s a guy, ranked way below me (No. 490 to Chang’s No. 30) and if I can’t beat him, well, it says something about my game. It wasn’t pressure like I felt before I played Pecci Friday, when I didn’t really sleep all night. The thing is, I don’t really look at myself as a 16 year old. I go out in every match to win, and I expect to keep improving.”

Agassi said his motivation was that the opponent was Paraguay. He had seen on television and had been told the things that had been done to the U.S. team in ’87 in that South American country--the rock-throwing and drum-beating and questionable line-calling that took place in Paraguay’s 3-2 victory.

And Agassi said his motivation became even more intense when he was told that Gonzalez, not Pecci, was his opponent, since Gonzalez was the Paraguayan player who told the press here earlier this week that he thought the U.S. team was a “bunch of crybabies.”

So Agassi met the press after his match, wearing a T-shirt that said: “Who’s Crying Now, Paraguay?”

“I can never imagine myself being that determined in a Davis Cup match in which we were up, 4-0,” Agassi said.

“Let’s just say that what happened here, with us winning like we did, was a gesture to Paraguay. Hopefully, in the future, they can be more civilized. Anybody who couldn’t admit that they were uncivilized (in ’87 in Paraguay) is asinine.

“So I wanted this match bad. It mattered. A lot. The issue of the Gonzalez crybaby quote before the match was a big one with me. From what he said, and from what I have heard from others on the tour about him, if I based my opinion on him from that, then he would not be the kind of person I care to know well.”

Agassi said this was just a Paraguay thing, not a policy statement on the state of Davis Cup nationalism.

“I don’t expect crowds in San Diego to be anything other than supportive. Nothing more,” he said. “We play France there, good players, nice people.

“It was different here,” he said. “It made me want to fight hard to win all the time. You had six Paraguayan fans trying to stir up things, take on a whole American crowd. So I just gave it back to them a little.”

A little?

When he broke Gonzalez’s serve to go up, 5-4, in the second set, he headed for the sidelines for the break, then stopped, faced the small Paraguayan cheering section, stuck his thumbs in his ears, waved his hands and stuck out his tongue.

To visualize it, think of what a 5 year old does when he’s told to eat his spinach. In fact, for a general impression of many of Agassi’s court antics, just think of a 5 year old.

When Agassi put the victory away with a huge topspin forehand passing shot, he stood in the middle of the court, looking like Rocky on the top of the stairs, and celebrated with the crowd. Then he trotted across to the far side and tossed his sweaty headband into the crowd, drawing a crescendo of young female screeching.

In retrospect, it was one of those great moments in sports.

Right here in Ft. Myers, Fla., in the closing moments of a Davis Cup match against a country outnumbered on site by 5,500 to six and a country that just lost its president in a bloody military coup, an 18 year old from Las Vegas was conducting international sports policy-making, supported feverishly by his groupies.

Henry Kissinger would have gotten sick on his wing-tips.