Metreveli Was Forerunner of Today’s Soviet Tennis Players

Alexander Metreveli began his tennis career with an old wooden racket, at the time the best available in the Soviet Union, and he ended his career with an old wooden racket, at the time the best available in the Soviet Union. If today’s Soviet players are an increasingly wealthy and ambitious lot, they owe it to this forerunner who, at the age of 45, finally has the latest in equipment as he embarks on a renewed career as a seniors player.

For nearly 20 years--from the early 1960s to his retirement in 1980--Metreveli was the most notable player to come from his country, a 12-time national champion and and occasional contender in Grand Slam championships. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, he began playing at age 9 with scavenged rackets and balls. The opportunities he forged to play outside of the Soviet Union on the larger international circuit were initially rare, brief and experimental.

“It was very difficult to be the first,” he said.

In 1968, Metreveli and partner Olga Morozova won the Wimbledon mixed doubles title. In 1973, he made the Wimbledon singles final, losing to Jan Kodes of Czechoslovakia in a match that had the distinction of being the first final ever at the All-England club between two citizens of communist countries, while Rod Laver, Stan Smith and 60 other professionals boycotted the tournament.

But his rise to a world class player, as a striking dark figure with a stinging backhand and a bit of temper, did not particularly impress many insular Soviet sports officials more interested in Olympic events and medals. “They didn’t understand what it meant,” he said.

Metreveli’s win in the Dow World Senior Open at Congressional Country Club here over Keith Diepraam of South Africa was Metreveli’s first appearance in an international event since his retirement, and times have surely changed.

Metreveli now has a streamlined graphite Dunlop. Soviet players have been flocking back into world class play since 1982, when the prospect of tennis at the Olympics raised national interest again after a six-year absence from the men’s and women’s tours.

The Soviet federation even has its own agent and racket and sneaker contracts. Five Soviet women are ranked in the top 100 and three in the top 40, most notably No. 7 Natalia Zvereva, while four Soviet men are in the top 100, led by No. 28 Andrei Chesnokov.

“When I was playing, we had quite a few, but we were playing only inside of the country,” he said. “So nobody knew what it was like. Now, we have a boom. It’s very popular. Everyone wants to play it.”

This widespread success has led some players to begin a financial rebellion that Metreveli approves of. In contrast to Metreveli’s struggles with freedom of travel and difficulty with languages, these players are becoming almost westernized professionals.

Zvereva recently acquired her own agent, Washington-based ProServ, and is attempting to keep her winnings rather than turn over all but a fraction to the federation. She and others are outgoing, vibrant teen-agers who speak at least a little of several other languages and go nowhere without their music. The 18-year-old Zvereva has started the revolt largely because she yearns for a red Mercedes.

“They see the money and they want to keep it,” Metreveli said. “They’re right. It’s a stupid thing. They’re going to change it, I think.”

Metreveli said he, too, will keep any earnings from the Dow. He said he is no longer a member of the Soviet federation, and not bound by its contracts. “I’m a private person now.”

The Dow is a welcome event to Metreveli, who spent many of his post-tennis tour years in a desk job, where he watched some of these changes approach. Following retirement he became a minister of sport, holding that post until two years ago when he quit and joined the Tass news agency as a tennis reporter.

As a minister, he was mired in an overwhelming bureaucracy. He saw that modern equipment and even tennis balls remain scarce unless an athlete can make the national team.

“Even now, we don’t have good equipment,” he said. “Only for the top players. It’s impossible to buy the strings, the balls, the rackets. Still they’re using the wood.”

He spent hours in meetings or plodding through reams of paper. His only tennis came in the spare hours he could devote to coaching juniors, and practicing with his two sons, one of whom is ranked in the top 20 nationally.

“What do you do when you are finished in our country?” he said. “You coach or you become a minister. You are not on the court or in the sport. You are reading papers. We have this bureaucracy that is unbelievable. It’s too much.”

But the future economic changes, Metreveli contends, must proceed cautiously to protect Soviet junior tennis, since prize money collected by the federation helps fund it. He suggests that more can be done with endorsement deals, which thus far consist of limited blanket packages that require all players to wear the same type of sneakers, for instance.

“They have free everything, balls and lessons and clubs,” he said. “So if they’re going to take all that money, then they’re going to start paying for things. It’s hard to say. Who’s going to pay for those junior teams? Of course, they have to change something, but it has to be in the right way.”

One thing that can be said of Metreveli’s era is that it was in some ways simpler. Throughout his career, he was an amateur playing in professional events, and his accomplishments, coming as they did with a scarcity of resources and opportunities, are an intriguing reminder. “It’s good to remember,” he said.