Courier Will Do His Duty

Jimmy Connors put the golf vs. tennis controversy into perspective--his--when he demanded, “How can you call a thing a sport when you don’t even have to run?”

Golf, of course, countered, “How can you call a game a sport where a shutout is called ‘love?’ ”

Tennis’ last hurrah was, “Ever see a fat tennis player?”

By any yardstick, though, tennis’ Jim Courier is an athlete. Growing up, he couldn’t even decide whether to be a tennis or baseball star. He could play them equally well. He played shortstop and pitcher. If you can do that, who needs Wimbledon? He could be at Riverfront playing for his beloved Cincinnati Reds. He had a pretty good fastball and he could turn the double play.

He chose tennis. You have to hit the fastball there, too, and sometimes it comes in at velocities--140 m.p.h.--that make Nolan Ryan’s fast one look like a changeup. It’s a game where you have to fool a hitter, too. Throw a little knuckler at him, otherwise known as a drop shot or lob.

Jim Courier pounces on drop volleys like Ozzie Smith sucking up the ground ball in the hole and, with a racquet in his hands, he’s Pete Rose edging up and guessing curve. His trademark baseball cap shades one of the most determined faces in sport.

He was the best tennis player in the world at the tender age of 21 years 5 months and remained so for 58 weeks. He had picked the right sport.

He is down here this week for the Newsweek Champions Cup at the Hyatt Grand Champions resort, a venue and a tournament where Courier first burst on the tennis public’s consciousness when he won the event in 1991.

A very select field awaits him this year, as imposing as any Wimbledon ever had, with 14 of the top 18 players in the world on the other side of the nets. Courier is as big a name as any of them with his four Grand Slam titles--two French, two Australian--to say nothing of his finalist finishes in one Australian (1994), a Wimbledon (1993) and a U.S. Open (1991).

But if tennis players run, if they stay thin and they hit a moving ball, they have sometimes been perceived as unlike their golfing brothers, additionally, in that they are not as patriotic.

Golfers, to a man, consider selection to a Ryder Cup team, golfing for your country, as a high honor, an event to be hailed, a privilege. Tennis players have been known to view selection to the Davis Cup team as an unwarranted interference with their otherwise untrammeled ability to make money. They are a little like the fellow Abraham Lincoln used to tell about who had been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town strapped to a railroad tie and, when asked what he thought about it, said: “Well, if it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I’d rather walk.”

Tennis players similarly have been known to have rather walked, to have regarded Davis Cup selection as a dubious distinction at best, and last year so many of them walked that the team, undermanned, went over to Australia and lost the Cup right off the bat.

So, this year, the U.S. Tennis Assn. was understandably buoyed when Courier, who had declined last year, announced that he was available for Davis Cup play and will join Todd Martin, Patrick McEnroe and Richey Reneberg in an effort to bring the Cup back to the United States.

The trouble with Davis Cup is it’s like the Holy Grail. You have to go to exotic places to get at it. Play for the United States starts in New Delhi later this month. It has been known to proceed to places like Paraguay, Colombia, the Bahamas, Bucharest, Dublin and once even to Cleveland and Little Rock.

And since Davis Cup matches do not have any niceties like tiebreakers in last sets, Courier is not only enlisting for a lot of long flights, but a lot of long matches. There is nothing like playing a 22-20 set in front of a hostile anti-American crowd after a 22-hour jet flight.

But of course, someone has to do it, and if the Couriers and the other top Americans failed their patriotic duties, the Davis Cup might wind up in a store window in Bolivia.

The Davis Cup “ties” (that’s what the Davis Cup calls matches) come in March, July, September and December, which means they follow hard on the heels of this sport’s “majors,” or Grand Slam events--the French Open, Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the Australian Open.

Golf’s Ryder Cup, by comparison, is played only once every two years and is concluded over a single weekend. The Davis Cup is more like a floating crap game.

Of course, Nathan Hale played for his country, too. And in front of hostile audiences. And Courier says he likes curry. So New Delhi in March, while hardly Paris in the spring, is not exactly hanging for your country. And you only have to do it once, too.

Why did he change his mind this year and elect to Davis Cup it?

“Maturity, I guess,” Courier said. “When we lost last year, it had a sobering effect. There’s no reason to send less than our best. It’s a responsibility. When you see what it means to other countries. . . . I mean, you play in Davis Cup in other countries, you really feel what it’s like to be rooted against. It’s you against the world.”

It might even be good for you, Courier suggests. But he has other goals than the Davis Cup for ‘94, he says. He would like to regain his No. 1 ranking; he is No. 3 behind Pete Sampras and Michael Stich. He would like to win his third French Open, second Italian and, perhaps, first Wimbledon this year.

But first, he would like to win his third Champions here. It’s where it all began for him. Look at it this way: If he hadn’t won here in 1991 and ‘93, he wouldn’t have to play Davis Cup. No one would ask him. When your country calls, you load up the bicarbonate of soda and go. Tennis is a sport where you not only run a lot, you fly a lot.