Merely Another Day on the Clay : Olympic Tennis Tournament Has Look of Pro Tour Stop

It is essentially the Barcelona Open, duded up with five-ringed logos, gold medals and three-tiered victory stands. Hilton Head revisited. Paris in the summer.

They are staging a tennis tournament later this month, on European clay, open to all professionals, and they are calling it the Olympic tennis competition. Jim Courier will probably win in the men’s division. Steffi Graf or Arantxa Sanchez Vicario will probably win in the women’s, primarily because Monica Seles is taking the week off.

Along the way, Boris Becker and Jennifer Capriati and Pete Sampras and Mary Joe Fernandez and Stefan Edberg will all check in, dirty a few tennis balls and complain about how going from British grass to Spanish soil to U.S. concrete will completely mess with their games.

Undoubtedly, the world needs to know who the best clay-court players in tennis are. That is why God created the French Open.

The Olympics?

No one involved would dare describe them as redundant, but . . .

“It doesn’t differ at all from any other stop on the tour,” says Marty Riessen, who has been designated as the United States women’s coach. “Single elimination. Singles and doubles.

“The only way it might differ is that there’s certainly more of a nationalistic feeling involved. You go as a team. You stay in the village, in the same buildings as the U.S. Olympic team. There’s a team feeling that’s hard to carry over into tennis, this being such an individualistic sport.”

Sometimes, not even the Olympics are capable of carrying that weight.

Since tennis regained its full-fledged medal status in 1988, “Team USA” has given us:

--Chris Evert bumping Elise Burgin off of the 1988 squad when Ms. Done It All, Seen It All decided, at the last minute, that a South Korean gold medallion was the one trinket missing from the family trophy case. So Evert went to Seoul and became the only American tennis player not to win a medal, proving to Burgin that life isn’t entirely unfair.

--Martina Navratilova griping about being left off the ’92 squad after making herself ineligible by refusing to play Federation Cup in ’91.

--John McEnroe griping about being left off the ’92 squad after declining a doubles-only invitation from the USTA. McEnroe wanted to play singles, too, but rosters were set months ago, long before his unexpected success at Wimbledon. Before Wimbledon, McEnroe was ranked 30th in the world and 10th in the United States--behind Aaron Krickstein, Derrick Rostagno and MaliVai Washington.

Thus, Team USA will look like this in Barcelona:

Men’s singles: Courier, ranked No. 1 in the world; Sampras, No. 3, and Michael Chang, No. 7.

Women’s singles: Capriati, No. 6; Mary Joe Fernandez, No. 7, and Zina Garrison, No. 14. Fernandez suffered a leg injury last week playing at Wimbledon, but it is not known how, or if, it will affect her availability.

Men’s doubles: Courier and Sampras.

Women’s doubles: The best available Fernandezes, Mary Joe and Gigi.

Selections were made by the USTA in January, based on the world rankings. At the time, the USTA figured it was the most equitable way to go.

Is this any way to pick an Olympic team?

Tim Mayotte, who won a silver medal in 1988, votes yes.

“The rankings are the best way to do it,” Mayotte says. “It would be a crime to take someone off the team just because somebody else has a better name.

“If you want to slip McEnroe into the doubles, fine. But we bust our butts all year long to get ranked high enough to get an opportunity like the Olympics. Players accept the rankings as the way players are judged and seeded into tournaments. To change it now would be a crime.”

Pam Shriver, who won a doubles gold medal at Seoul but won’t get the chance to defend it, agrees, but says the selections should be made later in the season.

“I’ve been the highest-ranking American doubles player for months,” Shriver says. “I’m fifth in the world now, but I was 10th at the time the selections were made. It’s just too far in advance.”

Still, if the U.S. men’s team seemed light in 1988--Mayotte and Brad Gilbert played singles--the 1992 squad arrives with three French and one U.S. Open championship trophies in tow.

And not one of them has seen his 22nd birthday.

Courier, 21, has won consecutive French Opens and is 13-0 on clay this year.

“Forget his result at Wimbledon,” says U.S. men’s Coach Tom Gorman, referring to Courier’s third-round loss to Andrei Olhovskiy of Russia. “On a clay court, Jim has an air of invincibility. He’s in such great condition and he’s such a strong individual that, emotionally, he’s an intimidating player to face on that surface.

“He’s doing what Lendl did for a couple of years--’If you don’t win the first set, forget about the fifth.’ ”

Chang, 20, was the youngest French Open champion, winning the 1989 title at 17, and has been absolutely relentless on clay in Davis Cup. Indeed, two of the greatest clay-court matches of the last decade have been won by Chang--his five-set victory over cramps and Lendl in the ’89 French Open and his two-day, down-from-two-sets victory over Horst Skoff of Germany in the 1990 Davis Cup semifinals.

Beyond that, Gorman puts the reason for the United States’ recent renaissance in men’s tennis on the slight shoulders of the 5-foot-8, 145-pound Chang.

“In a weird way, Michael’s winning the French Open opened the door for Sampras to win the U.S. Open and Courier to win the French and the Australian,” Gorman says. “All of a sudden, one of their teen-age buddies wins a Grand Slam and they start thinking, ‘Hey, I tagged this guy in the juniors. I can beat him.’ He got everyone believing, ‘I can win a Grand Slam, too.’ ”

Sampras got his in New York, in 1990, at 19. Now a month shy of 21, he also has a Wimbledon semifinal to his credit. Clay is his least friendly surface, but after second-round blowouts in his first two French Opens, Sampras reached the quarterfinals in Paris last month.

Courier is the prohibitive favorite in Barcelona, but the field also includes a former French Open finalist in Edberg of Sweden, ’92 French Open finalist Petr Korda of Czechoslovakia, Becker and Michael Stich of Germany and Gorman’s darkhorse, Carlos Costa of Spain.

“He’s had a real good spring,” Gorman notes.

Also a real good address. Costa was born and continues to live in Barcelona.

The women’s draw has been thinned by the Federation Cup-or-else threat, a requirement that went unheeded by three of the sport’s big four. Navratilova, Seles and Gabriela Sabatini didn’t play in ‘91, so they won’t play in ‘92, leaving Graf, the French Open winner in ’87 and ‘88, and Sanchez Vicario, the French Open winner in ‘90, in all likelihood, to divide the gold and silver medals.

The requirement has drawn predictable criticism, but Riessen maintains: “All sports in the Olympics have qualifying events and Fed Cup was ours. The men had Davis Cup. Personally, I think you should be able to qualify by your ranking alone, but I also think it’s fair to ask the players to qualify. Martina had an equal chance.”

Thus, the great American female hope is Capriati, 16.

“She’s still ranked sixth in the world,” Riessen says. “She’s only one of two players who have beaten Seles this year. That’s not a bad year. All the supposed problems that have been mentioned are normal age problems. She’s a normal teen-ager who happens to be growing up in the public eye.”

Capriati had an average French Open, losing in the quarterfinals to Seles. Mary Joe Fernandez lost to Sabine Hack during the third round in Paris, but reached the semifinals at Rome and Berlin, also clay tournaments. Garrison has played only eight matches this year on clay, but did reach the final in Houston, where she lost to Seles.

“We have a good chance for three medals,” Riessen says. “Two singles, and Mary Joe and Gigi ought to be seeded No. 1 in the doubles.”

Medals. That’s one difference between Barcelona and, say, Key Biscayne. The players are playing for medals, and for once in their careers, no cash. So the Olympics have that going for themselves, plus the opening ceremony.

Other than that, it is merely another tournament. That could change sometime. A team format has been suggested where men and women players would compete together under one flag.

How about Courier and Capriati vs. Becker and Graf, mixed doubles, USA vs. Germany, vying for the gold medal?

“Something like that would certainly help,” Mayotte says. “They need to do something that puts it apart from the rest of the tennis schedule.”

To be considered, before Atlanta.