These Davis Cup Players Will Face Double Pressure

Is this pressure?

For the first time in five years, the United States has a new Davis Cup doubles team. Rick Leach and Jim Pugh, who think they are long overdue for Davis Cup play, will make their debut Saturday against Mexico at La Costa, but they already are ducking volleys.

As for not being selected to the U.S. Davis Cup squad before, Leach and Pugh have been fairly outspoken about that--angering the doubles team they have replaced.

As an added burden, Leach and Pugh will be playing Leonardo Lavelle and Jorge Lozano, a Mexican team that everyone, especially the displaced U.S. team of Ken Flach and Robert Seguso, expects them to beat.

If Leach and Pugh don’t win impressively enough, they fear their Davis Cup doubles tenure will be exactly one match. Over and out.

Back to you, Ken and Bob.

“They shouldn’t have too much trouble with those guys, but maybe Leach and Pugh won’t be able to handle it,” Seguso said.

Is this affecting Leach and Pugh?

“It’s almost like a no-win situation for us,” Pugh said. “I mean, if we lose, we can’t play again, and if we win, we still might not play again. But finally, at least we get a chance to play and we feel we deserve that chance.”

This is not a new feeling. When U.S. Davis Cup Captain Tom Gorman bypassed them and stayed with Flach and Seguso for a first-round match against Paraguay a year ago, Leach and Pugh felt slighted--and pointed to their 3-0 record against Flach and Seguso.

“You know, they wouldn’t even look at us and we wouldn’t even look at them,” Seguso said. “It got a little ridiculous.”

Although Flach and Seguso had been the Davis Cup doubles team since 1985, Leach and Pugh insisted they were the ones who should have played against Paraguay, a match that amounted to a 5-0 walkover in February. Leach and Pugh noted that their Nabisco Grand Prix point totals were higher than those of Flach and Seguso.

Gorman said that Flach and Seguso were the experienced Davis Cup team, and besides, they had told him they wanted to play. Michael Chang got a chance to play his first Davis Cup singles matches against Paraguay after John McEnroe told Gorman he didn’t care to take part in the first round.

“So, if Flach and Seguso had said the same thing, I could have turned to Ricky and Jim,” Gorman said.

Flach and Seguso beat the Paraguayan doubles team of Francisco Gonzalez, 33, who was entering his second year on the Grand Prix without a doubles victory, and Victor Pecci, 33, who had not played doubles in more than 10 months. So, Flach and Seguso kept their Davis Cup streak intact while Leach and Pugh simmered in frustration.

“It was getting a little hard to take,” Leach said. “I think Paraguay would have been a good opportunity for us because the guys they played weren’t established doubles players. That would have been a good steppingstone for this match, to get some experience. That’s going to be a tough thing to overcome, but if we worry about it too much, it’s going to make it very difficult to play.”

Pugh, who called being passed over “a little strange,” acknowledged that Flach and Seguso had never lost a Davis Cup doubles match but said he and Leach still should have been chosen to play Paraguay.

“That was a little hard on us,” he said. “I mean, we played better than any team the whole year and still we couldn’t even play Davis Cup.”

The numbers alone seem to favor Leach and Pugh. They finished 1989 with five doubles victories to two for Flach and Seguso. Nabisco Grand Prix points, which favor those playing in more tournaments, listed Leach and Pugh No. 1, Flach and Seguso No. 5. Leach and Pugh played in 19 tournaments, Flach and Seguso in 15.

According to other ATP computer rankings for 1989, based solely on results, Pugh was No. 2 in doubles, Leach No. 4, Seguso No. 8 and Flach No. 11. The computer rankings list doubles players individually and not by team because players sometimes have different partners.

Regardless of what the numbers might say, Seguso said the quality of his work with Flach clearly outweighs any claim that they have been surpassed by Leach and Pugh.

“Leach and Pugh haven’t done that great to really take over our spot,” Seguso said. “What have they done? Won the Australian Open twice? There’s a lot of teams who have done that. Have they won Wimbledon? Have they won the U.S. Open? Have they won the French Open?”

Flach and Seguso have won Wimbledon twice and the U.S. Open once, and Seguso won the 1987 French Open with Anders Jarryd. Leach and Pugh, who have won two Grand Slam titles, the 1988 and ’89 Australian Opens, were top-seeded when they lost in the semifinals last week at Melbourne to Canadians Grant Connell, who is No. 45 in the ATP rankings, and Glenn Michibata, No. 48.

“They lost the semifinals to Connell and Michibata,” Seguso said. “Now, we’ll lose a few matches to teams like that, but when it comes down to crunch time, the semifinals or final of a Grand Slam, we won’t lose to teams like that.

“That’s where Leach and Pugh . . . well, they have some great wins, but they lose some matches they should win to win the tournament. We would never have lost to Connell and Michibata at that stage of a major tournament.”

Leach said he and Pugh get along with Flach and Seguso, even if they aren’t all that close on or off the court, and he understands how they feel.

“We took their spot, you know; they can’t be real happy about that,” Leach said. “So they haven’t given us any words of advice or anything like that. They haven’t even said anything to us, actually.”

Last year, Flach and Seguso were shut out of winning at least one Grand Slam title for the second time since 1985.

In addition to winning their second Australian Open last year, Leach and Pugh reached the final in two other Grand Slam events--Wimbledon and the U.S. Open--before losing. Leach and Pugh had won four tournaments by early May, but a crushing first-round loss to Alex Antonitsch and Ricky Osterhun in Paris began a six-month winless streak that ended with a victory in Itaparica, Brazil, in the final tournament of 1989.

At Wimbledon, Leach and Pugh lost in the final to John Fitzgerald and Jarryd, and in the U.S. Open final, they lost to McEnroe and Mark Woodforde. They finished with five titles, three fewer than they won in 1988.

“We won more tournaments than anybody else in 1989 even though we didn’t do very well,” Pugh said. “I guess we were a little erratic.”

The only constant was that Flach and Seguso kept playing in the Davis Cup. They were 10-0 after beating Yannick Noah and Guy Forget in a 5-0 victory over France, but in the semifinals in Munich, Boris Becker and Eric Jelen beat them for what turned out to be the deciding points of a 3-2 loss to West Germany.

“That was probably the worst experience I’ve ever felt,” Flach said. “That really hurt. But when Tom said that, for Mexico, it was just a temporary thing with Leach and Pugh to get them some experience, I understood.”

Gorman has said that no Davis Cup positions are secure for any future matches this year and that he will decide the team based on who is playing best at the time. He said his coaching pep talk for Leach and Pugh will be simple.

“I’ll just tell them to enjoy themselves, have a good time and win,” Gorman said.

Is this pressure?

“Everyone has thought, ‘Leach and Pugh, they’ve been the No. 1 doubles team, so why haven’t they played Davis Cup?’ ” Pugh said. “Well, now, suddenly ‘They are playing Davis Cup, so let’s see why they think they should be playing.’ Yes, this is pressure.”