U.S. Beats France in Davis Cup

Andre Agassi waved the American flag first. Robert Seguso gave him a hug and took the flag. John McEnroe got it next and waved it vigorously, as though he were signaling a ship. Finally, it was Ken Flach’s turn with the flag.

It was sort of a relay race, a tag team of nationalism and a celebration of victory. That flag should have been whipping, because the United States won in a breeze Saturday evening at the San Diego Sports Arena in its Davis Cup quarterfinal showdown with France.

Once Flach and Seguso had put away the French team of Yannick Noah and Guy Forget in 2 hours 55 minutes, four sets and two tiebreakers, 6-2, 7-6 (7-4), 4-6, 7-6 (7-3), the U.S. team began celebrating.

And why not?

Said Seguso: “It was a very satisfying win.”

The doubles victory, coupled with Friday night’s singles triumphs by McEnroe and Agassi, gave the United States an insurmountable 3-0 lead in the best-of-five competition, with today’s two singles matches reduced to best-of-three sets.

For the disappointed French, the postmatch analysis was not pleasant.

“They played great when they had to and we played like little boys,” Noah said.

In the Davis Cup semifinal round, the United States will play in Europe against the winner of the West Germany-Czechoslovakia quarterfinal, which Czechoslovakia leads, 2-1.

At this point, the U.S. team is thinking very positively. Flach said he thinks the United States can win it all. Seguso said he’s only thinking about the next round.

But until they subdued the stubborn French, what must Flach and Seguso have been thinking about their own game? It couldn’t have been too positive.

Flach and Seguso had won no more than one match in five Grand Prix tournaments this year. Only two weeks ago in Key Biscayne, Fla., they played one match and lost to Forget and his French teammate Eric Winogradsky.

The explanation of what turned the U.S. doubles team around sounded simple to Flach: “We just needed a Davis Cup to get us started.”

The U.S. players got started quickly against Noah, who seemed perfectly fit, and Forget, who may not have been fit because of his sore knees.

With France playing to stay alive in the competition and the United States trying to clinch, the Americans could not get a single service break after the fifth game of the first set, but that was not the difference.

“They definitely played two great tiebreakers,” Noah said.

Steering toward the second one in the fourth set, the French got there when Forget held his serve at love. Then, with the tiebreaker on serve at 3-2, the match turned on a single, crucial service return.

Forget jammed Flach with his serve, but Flach managed to send a forehand with something on it to Forget, who seemed unprepared. He sent the ball to Seguso, whose forehand volley winner eventually meant the match.

Flach said he wanted to hit the ball aggressively.

“If I had been tentative, I would have popped it up,” he said. “It went to the right place.”

Forget thought Flach guessed right on the serve, and that’s not all.

“I won’t say lucky, but it landed close to the line,” Forget said. “All I could do was just put it back in Seguso’s racket.”

On the first match point, Seguso placed a volley winner that Noah couldn’t get. That brought out the flag.

But earlier, chances appeared remote that the match would be decided in a fourth-set tiebreaker.

Flach and Seguso took the first set with service breaks of Forget in the third game and Noah in the fourth. As 12,584 looked on, many waving tiny American flags, the service breaks disappeared.

In the first-set tiebreaker, the United States went up, 3-2, when Seguso hit a big backhand service return crosscourt for a winner and closed it out in a hurry, 7-4, on Seguso’s ace.

Down two sets to none, Noah and Forget made a decision.

“There was nothing to lose,” he said.

Seguso was broken in the fourth game, which was all France needed, although the United States wasted two break points against Noah in the eighth game. Flach said the third set swirled with a momentum change and the United States only witnessed it.

“We really didn’t let up,” he said. “There was a little momentum switch. They just picked up their level.”

After the 10-minute break between the third and fourth sets, Seguso nearly left his serve in the locker room. He fell behind, 15-40, but wriggled back to deuce, and on the first game point, Flach put away a backhand volley winner.

It was Flach’s turn to struggle with his serve at 3-3. He faced a break point, but saved it with a withering service winner to Forget’s backhand, which always seemed to be a good place to hit it.

There were to be no more break points. And for France, there will be no more competition for this year’s Davis Cup championship. After so much promise and high hopes, the proportions of the French defeat perplexed Noah.

“When you talk about winning and when you lose that bad, it’s embarrassing,” he said.

However, as confident as the U.S. team may have been, they did not expect to win in just three matches, although Flach said he was certainly grateful that’s how it happened.

“All three of the matches seemed like a tossup,” he said. “For us to dominate, I guess it was kind of a surprise.”