Davis Cup Matchups Work Out Just About as Gorman Had Hoped

Now it can be told:

According to U.S. Davis Cup captain Tom Gorman Saturday, “This was the second best draw we could’ve gotten. I couldn’t have told you that on Thursday.”

Gorman was referring to the pairings ceremony held Thursday, during which the names and order of the singles matches were drawn out of a hat. Gorman got his wish when the draw placed his hottest player, John McEnroe, into the first match against Yannick Noah, against whom he had a 3-0 edge in his career.

The best draw for the Americans would have been McEnroe in the first match against Henri Leconte, against whom McEnroe is 9-0.

Left unsaid by Gorman was his desire to keep 18-year-old Andre Agassi away from the pressure that invariably goes with playing first.

Before the matches began, Agassi was 0-1 against Noah and 1-2 against Leconte.

After Ken Flach and Robert Seguso clinched this Davis Cup quarterfinal with a 6-2, 7-6 (7-4), 4-6, 7-6 (7-3) victory over Noah and Guy Forget, a French reporter asked Flach: “Do you think it was fair--two players against one and a half players?”

The reporter was referring to a knee injury sustained weeks ago by Forget.

“He was a pretty good half a player,” Flach said of Forget, who lost his powerful left-handed serve just once in four sets. “I’ve seen him show up whole and he hasn’t played this well. I thought he played better than Noah.”

Said Forget: “The knee bothered me the last few weeks. But today it didn’t bother me too much.”

Agassi has been talking all week about how “fit” he is now that he has started training with former Chilean javelin thrower Pat Etcheberry.

“I’ve never worked harder in my life,” he says. And he insists it paid off in his four-set victory over Leconte Friday night.

Agassi was noticeably quicker against Leconte than he was last month at Indian Wells in the Newsweek Champions Cup, where he lost to Noah in straight sets in the quarterfinals.

“He’s even carrying himself differently since he started working with Pat,” says Phillip Agassi, Andre’s older brother.

Agassi would like to avenge his Indian Wells loss to Noah in today’s first singles match.

Etcheberry’s regimen for Agassi in a non-tournament week includes two practice sessions a day, weight training every other day and an hour and a half of running on days when he doesn’t lift weights.

“If you know me, you know that’s a big commitment,” says Agassi who was sleeping 12 hours a night and subsisting mostly on pizza and soft drinks before working with Etcheberry.

Oh yes, Etcheberry has also been assigned by Agassi’s handlers to serve as Agassi’s nutritionist.

Agassi is so pleased with the improvement in his physical conditioning that he is now considering gracing Wimbledon this year. It’s a tournament he has never played.

“I might just pop into it at the last moment,” he says. “I’ll have to wait and see how I feel at the time.”

Agassi is still more comfortable on slower surfaces. And part of the reason he has shied away from Wimbledon is because it comes just two weeks after the French Open. The French Open is played on the slow red clay of Stade Roland Garros in Paris.

Agassi isn’t the first player to complain about having to make the adjustment to the slick grass courts of Wimbledon. And he won’t be the last.

John McEnroe, for one, is happy with the trend toward shorter matches. The Davis Cup recently has begun using a tiebreaker if needed in the first four sets. Players used to have to win any set by two games, now that is the case only in the fifth set.

In a 1982 Davis Cup match against Sweden’s Mats Wilander, McEnroe needed more than six hours to win in five sets. The second set lasted almost two and a half hours.

McEnroe said he thinks two out of three sets ought to be enough to determine the better player. And he insists it’s not because he is 30 years old.

“I don’t necessarily believe in the five-set concept,” he said. “Matches don’t have to be four or five hours. Usually the fitter player will win in two out of three just as often as he will in three out five.”

The sight of Flach, Seguso and Noah on the same court together brought back memories of the now infamous “hair incident” in the doubles final of the 1985 U.S. Open.

In that match, Flach and Seguso defeated Noah and Leconte, 6-0, in the fourth set. The French thought they had won the third set in a tiebreaker when Noah hit a shot that whizzed past Flach’s long hair and out of the court.

Television replays made it appear the ball hit Flach’s hair, which if correct, would have given Noah and Leconte the set. Flach said it was the official’s responsibility to determine whether the ball hit his hair. The official said the ball did not touch Flach’s hair.

There was a long argument, but the official gave the point to Flach and Seguso. The final set passed quickly.

But, Flach insisted Saturday, “we’ve played them so many times since then, that is all forgotten. We’re all good friends.”

Davis Cup Notes

One of the most annoying omissions at the San Diego Sports Arena is the lack of a scoreboard that would inform spectators of the score in each individual game. . . . Guy Forget was born in Casablanca, Morocco. . . . Although the French didn’t have to announce their doubles team until one hour before Saturday’s match, Yannick Noah said he knew all week his partner would be Forget.