TENNIS : Doubles Team Must Pull Off Feat of Clay

When the United States Tennis Assn. decided to play the Davis Cup final on a clay surface, which player was consulted first:

a) Andre Agassi

b) Rick Leach

c) Jim Pugh

If you answered a), then you understand who is utmost in the USTA’s mind. And it isn’t the doubles team of b) Leach and c) Pugh, which doesn’t really surprise b).

“They sure didn’t ask me first,” Leach said. “I had an idea before that we might use clay, though. And I thought then it was a pretty good idea. But it’s not our best surface, though.”

Far from it, actually. Clay is probably the worst surface for Leach and Pugh. But when the United States plays host to Australia in the Davis Cup final, Nov. 30-Dec. 2, at the Suncoast Dome in St. Petersburg, Fla., the doubles team will be riding a one-match winning streak on clay. In fact, the United States wouldn’t even be playing in its first Davis Cup final since 1984 if Leach and Pugh had not won their doubles match in the semifinals against Austria last month on slow clay in Vienna.

“After that match, we’re pretty confident on clay,” Leach said. “I think the match that we won in Vienna, we overcame a big obstacle.”

Leach said he and Pugh quickly understood that the U.S. decision to play on clay would be a smart move.

“The biggest factor is we’ve taken (Pat) Cash’s biggest weapons away,” Leach said. “We’ve kind of taken him out of the Davis Cup. And he could beat anyone in the world in Davis Cup.”

Cash favors courts with fast surfaces, especially grass, because of his serve-and-volley style. But that style is less effective on clay, where baseliners have the edge because the ball slows down when it bounces.

“We might be able to win the final with Jimmy and I playing a match that really doesn’t matter,” Leach said. “If so, that would be great.”

But first, Leach and Pugh need to get their game back together.

Since winning their important Davis Cup match in Vienna, they have lost consecutive first-round matches in ATP Tour events at Tokyo and Vienna. Both of those matches were played indoors on Supreme, which is a semi-fast surface that ought to favor Leach and Pugh. Maybe they should have stayed on clay.

Leach and Pugh will be in Paris next week to play another indoor event on Supreme and try to shake out of their short slump.

“The match against Austria did take something out of us,” Leach said. “We got so up for it, we’ve kind of had a letdown since. There was so much pressure on us, I guess both of us were really tired after that.”

Sampras vs. Chang: Teen-age Grand Slam winners Pete Sampras and Michael Chang will meet in an exhibition, the Forum Tennis Challenge, Dec. 18. Sampras, 19, of Rancho Palos Verdes, is the youngest male player to win the U.S. Open. He beat Agassi in the final and defeated Thomas Muster, Ivan Lendl and John McEnroe in succession to get there.

Chang won the 1989 French Open at 17 to become the youngest male player to earn a Grand Slam title. Chang, of Placentia, will join Agassi and the doubles team of Leach and Pugh when the U.S plays Australia in the Davis Cup final.

Slims chances: Apparently, there is no way Jennifer Capriati won’t be playing in the Virginia Slims Championships, not after all the strings have been pulled to get her there.

Capriati, 14, is the beneficiary of a series of rules changes designed to make her eligible for the Championships, the women’s season-ending event, Nov. 12-18 at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Not only did the Women’s International Tennis Council (WIPTC) change its rules and permit Capriati to turn pro before her 14th birthday in March, the WIPTC also allowed her to play more major tournaments. There wasn’t much reaction to these moves, but the latest action has drawn widespread attention.

The WIPTC made a third rule change for Capriati’s sake earlier this month. She wanted to play a major tournament last week at Filderstadt, Germany, so she would earn enough tour points to ensure qualifying for the Championships. But the WIPTC noted that Capriati had already reached her limit of 10 major, or so-called “Tier II’ events, and ruled that Capriati can play only minor, or “Tier IV” events, the rest of the year.

So how would Capriati pick up enough points to stay in the top 16 who are eligible for the Championships? The WIPTC obligingly downgraded from Tier II to Tier IV an event in San Juan, Puerto Rico, thus making it a minor event. Capriati quickly entered and played in the tournament last week.

She is on the bubble for qualifying, No. 15 in the latest points standings. It may well be that Capriati’s eligibility is a non-issue, that Capriati would have easily had enough points if she hadn’t been limited to so few tournaments, that she is certainly one of the top 16 players and a worthy entrant regardless of what rules were changed to help her get the needed points.

Mary Joe Fernandez, a solid No. 5 in the points and already qualified, is not surprised how Capriati was dealt with.

“She’s qualified and I think she deserves to play, (but) there has got to be an exception for every rule and they’ve certainly made them for her,” Fernandez said. “She’s been lucky, I guess. They made them for her.”

School’s out: Already a veteran at 19, Fernandez has not lost a match since Gabriela Sabatini won their U.S. Open semifinal in three sets. Sabatini went on to defeat Steffi Graf in the final and Fernandez went on to win tournaments in Tokyo and Filderstadt, improve her post-Open record to 9-0 and climb to a high of No. 4 in the Virginia Slims rankings.

Fernandez, who played on the pro tour while she continued in high school in Miami, said she is much more solid on the court now that she doesn’t have to divide time between tennis balls and school books. A straight-A student, Fernandez graduated 16 months ago and said she is reaching her potential as a player.

“Being out of school has been the biggest factor in my tennis this year,” she said. “There was a lot of pressure to do well in school and play tennis, too, but now there were no final exams before the U.S. Open, no homework on the road, no tests to study for. That’s a big load off my shoulders.”

Tennis Notes

The latest on who’s in and who’s out of the $6-million Grand Slam Cup, the rival event to the ATP Finals, the players’ own season-ending tournament: John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Thomas Muster and David Wheaton are in and Boris Becker is out. McEnroe said he won’t keep any money he earns from playing but instead will donate it all to charity. First-round losers receive $100,000. The winner of the event, Dec. 11-16 in Munich, gets $2 million.

Ilie Nastase and Stan Smith have entered the $65,000 Prudential-Bache Grand Champions event Nov. 8-11 at the Newport Beach Tennis Club. Others expected in the 12-player field are John Lloyd, Bob Lutz and Ross Case. . . . Lisa Raymond, 17, and Ivan Baron, 18, have been named junior players of the year by Tennis magazine. Raymond, of Valley Forge, Pa., won the 18-and-under Easter Bowl, the national and then junior international grass court championships. Baron, of Plantation, Fla., won the 18s national, the Easter Bowl and the junior Italian Open.

TeamTennis, which lost Domino’s pizza as a sponsor, will announce a new sponsor for its pro league at a news conference Monday at the Forum with Billie Jean King, chief executive officer of TeamTennis. King will also announce that a player ranked in the top five will play TeamTennis next season. In recent years, TeamTennis has not gone after the big names.

Volvo North America, which recently vowed cutbacks in its sports marketing budget because of a downturn in auto sales, has dropped its title sponsorship of the Hall of Fame Championships in Newport, R.I. . . . The referee selected for the Davis Cup final between the U.S. and Australia is Stefan Fransson of Sweden. The International Tennis Federation also named Bruno Rebeuh of France and Sultan Gangji of Great Britain as umpires.