He Looks for Ways to Defeat Himself

Goran Ivanisevic is a uniquely gifted tennis player, a fact of life he sometimes finds endlessly annoying.

I mean, it has been known to interfere with his day.

Take the time when his longtime coach, Bob Brett, took a powder on him and left last year. Ivanisevic couldn’t figure that one out at all.

What happened was that Ivanisevic came to a tournament and Brett suggested, “Let’s practice in the morning at 8 o’clock.” Ivanisevic didn’t need much time to figure that was a bad idea. I mean, 8 o’clock is early.

“Naw,” he said, “I’m not going to practice because, practice or no practice, I can’t win here.”

Ivanisevic was surprised when Brett announced he was dropping him. “I thought he was joking,” he said.

He wasn’t. When Ivanisevic got over his shock, he hired a fellow Croatian, Vedran Martic, as his coach. Ivanisevic has known Martic since they were both junior players in Yugoslavia. Martic presumably knows better than to schedule an 8 a.m. practice.

You have a pretty good fix on Ivanisevic when you know that about him. Lots of guys march to their own drummer. Ivanisevic has a whole brass band to keep time to. Plus a calliope.

With the ball in his hand, Ivanisevic is a dangerous opponent, one of the best players in the world. With the ball on the other side of the net, his attention tends to wander. “Sometimes, it’s like he goes for a space walk,” said Charlie Pasarell, the tournament director.

When he’s not walking in space, Ivanisevic can be a presence. He has a Mach One serve. By the time you hear it, it’s too late to do anything about it. It has outrun the sound. Ivanisevic’s serve has been clocked at 132 mph.

The opponent is like that storied batter who faced Walter Johnson’s fastball. When the umpire called “Strike!” the batter turned. “Where was the pitch?” he wanted to know. “Right over the plate,” said the ump. The batter frowned. “It sounded low,” he said, returning to the dugout.

That’s the only way Ivanisevic’s serves can be gauged when he’s on. You can only hope they sound out.

He was second in service aces last year with 917. Pete Sampras led the tour with 974. But Sampras played in 81 matches (he lasts longer in the tournaments than Ivanisevic does). Ivanisevic ran up his total in only 63 matches.

Of course, on return-of-service, Goran is in nobody’s top 10. But, 14 times last year, he had 20 or more aces per match, including 36 in a Wimbledon semifinal against Sampras. He lost anyway.

In some respects, Goran is like the golfer with the big booming tee shot. He hits the ball 350 yards--then three-putts.

Ivanisevic has been runner-up at Wimbledon twice and semifinalist on two other occasions. Put him on that fast grass in the All-England and he’ll keep you on the ropes all afternoon. Put him on a tamer surface, and he’s the one tangled in the ropes all night. He bombed out of the French Open’s milquetoast surface in the first round last year.

On those footings, Ivanisevic does what he does best--lose to somebody less talented.

Of course, he does not take defeat philosophically. Ivanisevic has been known to be a world-class umpire baiter, in the top 10 among complainers. The other afternoon, he hit one of those Ivanisevic shots, a croquet blow backward between his legs. He was irate when the lineswoman called it out. He protested it was in.

Afterward, a puzzled newsman asked him how he could know it was in. He had his back to it, didn’t he? Ivanisevic thought a moment. “I felt it was in,” he explained smoothly. “I thought I was going to make the ‘play of the day’ on CNN.”

He came down here this week to the Newsweek Champions Cup at the Hyatt Grand Champions fearing the worst, as usual. Ivanisevic has played here--sort of--for five years. He was eliminated in the first round in four of them and lasted clear to the third round in the other.

He has been slightly more of a factor than the ball boys.

Being Ivanisevic, he delivered himself of the public opinion it was the atmosphere. He felt ill at ease in this area, he said, because when he went out for dinner, the restaurant was so full of the aged that he was afraid they might die before his dessert.

Of course, Ivanisevic didn’t have to worry long. He was out of here by nightfall of the opening round most years.

But this year is different. To his considerable surprise, Ivanisevic found himself lasting clear through to the semifinals. It may have reduced him to eating in his room.

As this is written, Ivanisevic is busy doing what he does best--losing to a lesser player. He is space-walking through a match against the immortal Paul Haarhuis, whose name, I think, means “barber shop” in Dutch.

Haarhuis is not your basic singles titlist. Doubles is his game. He has won the doubles at three Grand Slam events, the French, Australian and U.S. Opens, but in singles he has been hard-pressed to get out of the first round. He has won only one tour tournament in his life.

No matter. Ivanisevic found a way to turn him into Bill Tilden in the semifinals here Saturday.

Haarhuis is a steady enough player. That’s his trouble. He probably finds it easy to get up for practice at 8 a.m. He doesn’t beat himself. He usually lets others do that for him. He needs help out there. A partner.

Nevertheless, he put Ivanisevic in a quick hole, 6-2, on Saturday. He kept throwing 109-mph serves at Ivanisevic. But they were in. Ivanisevic’s were 120 mph but out.

In the second set, they marched resolutely to 6-6 and the tiebreaker. Ivanisevic fell behind, 5-2, then unaccountably righted the ship. He went on a streak to lead the tiebreaker, 6-5. Then he bunched up and served a 127-mph service ace. He had won the set.

But wait a minute! The linesman is calling a foot fault. Ivanisevic cannot believe it. He drops his racquet, his face darkening with rage. He has just tied the match at a set apiece and here they are laying technicalities on him. Ivanisevic looks at the sky as if to say, “Me again, huh, God?” His words to the chair umpire are less ecclesiastical.

Naturally, he blows the next two points and the match.

A perfectly typical afternoon for Ivanisevic. Foot faults in tennis these days are called about as often as traveling in pro basketball.

If it was going to happen, it was going to happen to Ivanisevic. Tennis once again ruined his day.