McEnroe, Agassi Say Everything’s Cool as U.S. Prepares for Cup Match

Andre Agassi and John McEnroe made nice Tuesday. Ken Flach dumped on the Paraguayans. And Robert Seguso smiled a lot.

This was San Diego’s first public opportunity to meet the U.S. Davis Cup team that will face the French in a quarterfinal match that begins Friday afternoon at the San Diego Sports Arena and concludes Sunday.

Agassi, 18, and McEnroe, once the No. 1 player in the world, will each play a singles match Friday. One will play Yannick Noah. The other will play Henri Leconte. On Saturday, Flach and Seguso, undefeated in Davis Cup doubles, will play Noah and Guy Forget, a team they have needed five sets to beat in each of their two previous meetings.

The matches will conclude Sunday with Agassi and McEnroe meeting the Frenchmen they didn’t face Friday. The order of the singles matches will be determined at Thursday’s draw.

The winning team will move on to the Davis Cup semifinals. If the United States wins, it will play again in late July against the winner of this weekend’s match between defending Davis Cup champion West Germany and Czechoslovakia.

The American team has advanced this far thanks to a 5-0 February victory over Paraguay in Florida. That avenged the humiliating upset loss the United States suffered in Paraguay in 1987--a loss that featured unruly Paraguayan fans and almost constant crowd noise during points.

The Florida revenge was sweet. But Flach said Tuesday it wasn’t as satisfying as it might have been “considering the hurt and pain we suffered down there (in Paraguay).

“But,” he added at a news conference, “at least we squished them like the little bugs they were.”

McEnroe stopped just short of comparing the media to insects when the subject of his widely reported feud with Agassi came up.

“The press is not considerate of other people’s feelings,” McEnroe said.

“There is no friction between us,” Agassi added.

Yet McEnroe has repeatedly criticized Agassi’s flamboyance on court. And last month, Agassi wondered out loud why McEnroe had never mentioned any of this to his face.

Now, McEnroe says, he will counsel Agassi if Agassi is interested. “The advice I can give him is better to be kept behind closed doors,” McEnroe said. “But I hope to have a number of discussions with him this week. Then again, when you’re 18 you have a mind of your own. That’s the way I was when I was 18.”

McEnroe even defended Agassi against recent attacks by other players and members of the media. “People should be pulling for Andre Agassi,” McEnroe said. “People like him don’t come around that often.”

McEnroe will certainly talk to Agassi about the strengths and weaknesses of Noah and Leconte, neither of whom has ever beaten him. Agassi must try to forget his straight-set loss to Noah at the Newsweek Champions Cup last month, followed by a first-round loss to West Germany’s Carl-Uwe Steeb in Florida the following week.

Agassi said he has spent the time since the Steeb loss working on his physical conditioning and adjusting to the new rackets he switched to at the end of 1988.

“I’m looking at this year as a learning experience,” said Agassi, who finished 1988 ranked No. 3 in the world. “But right now I feel physically stronger than at any period in my life.”

Then there was the matter of the crowds. American Davis Cup crowds have traditionally been as placid as European and South American crowds have been rabid.

“I don’t believe in cowbells and whistles,” McEnroe said. “That’s for soccer matches. And I don’t believe in noise during points. A player ought to be able to hear the ball coming off his opponent’s racket. But this is a situation where I think some cheering would be nice. Davis Cup is the one opportunity Americans have to root unabashedly for us.”

Ticket sales at the Sports Arena have been strong, and tournament officials are predicting sellouts for all three days.