Spanish Davis Cup Captain Opts to Hold Back Corretja

Spanish captain Javier Duarte is taking one of the biggest gambles in Davis Cup history.

Duarte is leaving his highest-ranked player, Alex Corretja, out of today’s opening singles in the finals against defending champion Australia at Barcelona, opting instead for 20-year-old Juan Carlos Ferrero. Calling the move “a coaching decision,” Duarte is saving Corretja for Saturday’s doubles and, presumably, Sunday’s final-day singles in the best-of-five competition.

Albert Costa will face Lleyton Hewitt today in the opening singles match with Ferrero playing Patrick Rafter in the second. In Saturday’s doubles, Corretja will team with Joan Balcells against Sandon Stolle and Mark Woodforde.

The schedule for Sunday’s reverse singles has Hewitt playing Ferrero in the opener and Rafter playing Costa in the final match. But team captains can change the lineup for Sunday, and Corretja is expected to replace either Ferrero or Costa in one of the matches.

“It’s a coach’s decision,” said Duarte, who is also Corretja’s personal coach. “The idea behind it is that we want to put Costa out because we believe he’s the best to face Hewitt. And we believe Ferrero is the best to face Rafter in Rafter’s first match.”

Corretja did not protest--at least publicly--despite being the world’s No. 8-ranked player and fresh from last week’s Masters Cup in Lisbon, where he beat Hewitt in three sets. He’s 0-2 in his other two matches against Hewitt, including a 6-0, 6-0, 6-1 loss in the Australian Open.

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John McEnroe defeated Mansour Bahrami, 6-3, 6-4, to set up today’s match in the Honda Challenge at London with five-time Wimbledon champion Bjorn Borg. The two played twice in the Wimbledon final, Borg winning in 1980, McEnroe in 1981. Borg advanced with a 6-3, 4-6, 10-3 victory over John Lloyd.

Golf

David Duval carried Tiger Woods, while Argentina and New Zealand topped the leader board in the first round of the World Cup of Golf at Bella Vista, Argentina.

“I was a jockey. I just rode my horse all day,” said Woods, who combined with Duval for an 11-under 61 in the opening best-ball round. “I didn’t really strike the ball as good as I like, and I wasn’t as sharp as I needed to be.”

Duval and Woods finished the round tied for fifth, four strokes behind Argentina’s Eduardo Romero and Angel Cabrera and New Zealand’s Frank Nobilo and Greg Turner. The 24 teams will play an alternate-shot round today, followed by another best-ball round Saturday, and a second alternate-shot round Sunday.

More than half of the LPGA Tour’s 37 events will offer prize money of at least$1 million, making the 2001 schedule the strongest in the 50-year history of the women’s tour, according to Commissioner Ty Votaw.

The four majors--the Nabisco Championship, LPGA Championship, U.S. Open and the Women’s British Open--will have prize money of at least $1.5 million, with the U.S. Open offering the richest prize in women’s golf, $2.75 million.

Soccer

Jorge Campos, the goalkeeper for the Mexican national soccer team, was given two cars, including a Ferrari, to play in Major League Soccer.

Testimony in an antitrust lawsuit against the league revealed that Campos was given the car. Other players were given other perks, including one who got an apartment in Trump Tower.

Campos was signed by the Galaxy in 1996 and was traded to Chicago in 1998.

Carla Overbeck, captain of the U.S. national soccer team for three world championships and the 1996 Olympics, will play her final international game Dec. 17 against Japan. Joining Overbeck on the roster will be 13 members of the 2000 Olympic team, including Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly, Julie Foudy and Brandi Chastain. . . . Thomas Dooley, 39, longtime U.S. defender who spent last season with New York/New Jersey, is expected to announce his retirement Monday.

Miscellany

More aggressive drug testing will help keep the 2002 Winter Games clean, members of the White House Task Force on Drug Use in Sports said at their first meeting in Salt Lake City.

The group discussed how to develop tests to detect the ever-changing drugs used by athletes, and how to educate athletes, coaches and the public about the problem.

Frank Shorter, chair of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said substantially more athletes will be caught by drug testing during the next five years.

Shorter said his agency, which is running the USOC’s anti-drug efforts, plans to conduct 5,000 drug tests next year--half of them unannounced, out-of-competition screenings.

Joey Meyer, 51, who succeeded his father, Ray Meyer, as coach at DePaul then was fired after 13 seasons, was hired as the first coach of the Chicago Skyliners of the new ABA 2000 league.

Thoroughbred trainer Mel Stute, experiencing shortness of breath, was admitted to Citrus Valley Medical Center in Covina on Wednesday and is expected to undergo quadruple-bypass heart surgery.

Stute, 73, won Breeders’ Cup races with Brave Raj and Very Subtle in the 1980s and the 1986 Preakness with Snow Chief.