One on One

by John Feinstein

  He did neither. The players finished a game, sat on their chairs during a changeover, and went back on court. Alfano and I looked at each other; they were still playing.

  We made our way to court one. It was now well after eight o’clock, but there would be light for at least another ninety minutes. Slipping and sliding often, the two men played on until Lendl won in straight sets—none of them easy, because nothing was ever easy for Lendl at Wimbledon. He shook hands with Purcell just before dark. At least now we had a match to write about, along with McEnroe’s unilateral decision to call off play on his court.

  We went to the interview room, hoping to get a decent quote or two from Lendl. This wasn’t terribly likely. Lendl had grown up in Czechoslovakia but had moved to the United States as an eighteen-year-old tennis phenom. He had been spotted by Wojtek Fibak, a successful Polish player who had moved to Connecticut, and had actually moved in with Fibak and his family while adapting to life in the States.

  Lendl is extremely bright, but in the early stages of his career, because of the language issue and because of the overprotective nature of tennis, there were no hints of either that or his somewhat off-the-wall sense of humor. He came across as dour and humorless, even though he was neither. Because I liked McEnroe, my instinct was to dislike Lendl. I remembered being extremely upset when Lendl came from two sets down in Paris in 1984 to beat McEnroe, the one and only time McEnroe made the French Open final.

  Most people, myself included, saw that match as a huge breakthrough for Lendl, who had often had trouble dealing with the kind of mental pressure both McEnroe and Jimmy Connors put on him when they played big matches. He had lost two U.S. Open finals to Connors, and McEnroe always seemed to find a way to beat him when it mattered. The win at the French was the first of eight major titles for Lendl.

  “I actually think that match was more important for John than for me,” Lendl said to me many years later, sitting in the corner of an Outback Steakhouse that had emptied out while we talked into the night. “If John wins, I think he would have won the Grand Slam that year. He won Wimbledon and the [U.S.] Open, and if he had won Paris he would have gone to Australia [the Australian Open was played then at year’s end, not in January as it is now] and probably won there. As it was, in his greatest year he only won two.” And, interestingly, never won another major title after that.

  Now though, at Wimbledon in 1985, McEnroe was still king and the subject of all sorts of tabloid stories because he was dating Tatum O’Neal. “John, if you win Wimbledon, will you dedicate the victory to Tatum?” was one press conference question.

  McEnroe and every other player, except for Purcell, who was presumably taking a hot shower, were long gone by the time Lendl stalked into the interview room that first night. Stalked is the correct word because he was angry. At Wimbledon, much like the Masters, each player is accompanied to the interview room by a club member who is there (I guess) to ensure that there is a certain measure of decorum in the room.

  Before anyone could ask a question, Lendl launched into a tirade. “I can’t believe I just walked into locker room and there was no one there,” he began. “I find out they let McEnroe go home because he asks, and they just let us go on and play and we could have killed ourselves out there. Nobody told me we had option to stop. This is unbelievable.”

  Most of us had never seen Lendl like this: angry, passionate, and willing to talk. Pete Alfano asked him if he had talked to Alan Mills.

  “Yes!” Lendl screamed. “He tells me if I had asked he would have let us stop. I say, ‘How am I supposed to know that? Why don’t you come on court and tell us McEnroe stopped?’ It’s completely ridiculous.”

  The club member looked pale. I was about to ask Lendl if he was planning any formal protest—it wouldn’t do any good, but I wanted to keep him rolling—when Richard Finn jumped in with a question. Finn had been a good junior tennis player and had carved out a nice living as a freelance tennis writer. He was willing to travel just about anywhere on his own dime, so he was often used overseas by USA Today and other publications. Frequently he would call newspapers when a player from their town was doing well and offer a story. He also freelanced for a number of tennis magazines. For this Wimbledon, one magazine had assigned him a story on the new racquet Lendl was using that summer. In any other sport a reporter with an assignment like that would have found the player someplace and gotten a few minutes with him one on one to talk about the new racquet. In tennis that’s almost impossible to do because there is no access to players at tournaments, other than the interview room, and trying to get an offsite interview with a player is a little bit like trying to get a school from a BCS conference to schedule a home-and-home series with Boise State.

  So the interview room was Finn’s only shot at Lendl and his new racquet. Thus, while Lendl sat there with steam coming out of his ears, Finn asked him about the new racquet. Alfano and I looked at each other. Was he kidding?

  As soon as Lendl finished the answer on the racquet, I jumped in and asked if he planned to follow up on what had just happened. “You bet I will,” he said, and then he was off to the races again, demanding to know just who these Wimbledon guys thought they were.

  Almost out of a dream I heard Finn’s voice again. “Ivan, what’s the best thing about the new racquet in terms of your game?”

  Back to the racquet. While Lendl was answering, I leaned over to Finn—who was and is a friend—and whispered, “If you ask one more question about that f—ing racquet, I’m going to borrow one from Lendl and shove it right down your throat.”

  Finn looked at me to see if I was serious. Apparently he knew I was because he asked no more racquet questions. Lendl spent several more minutes accusing the Wimbledon committee of McEnroe favoritism (a remarkable irony given McEnroe’s relationship with Wimbledon back then) and most crimes of the twentieth century, practically including the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.

  As we walked out, Finn wanted to know what the big deal was. “Big deal?” Alfano said. “Ivan Lendl is killing the Wimbledon committee, and you want to know about his racquet? Are you kidding?”

  “I’ve got this story to do…”

  “We don’t care.”

  Fortunately, Finn is a good guy. “I can see it from your point of view,” he said. “I guess.”

  All was well. I had all I needed for my first day at Wimbledon: Lendl was the lead, the Duke was the sidebar, McEnroe led the notebook. Not bad for a day when a grand total of three sets plus six games were played before dark.

  3

  Next Stop, Bloomington

  THE RAIN DIDN’T LET up much during that first week at Wimbledon, and the constant delays led to some funny moments in the media room, another of them involving Richard Finn.

  One of Finn’s clients during that Wimbledon was the paper in Meriden, Connecticut, which was very interested in how one of its local heroes, Bud Schultz, was doing. Schultz was a good story. He was twenty-six and had played Division II tennis at Bates before being talked into trying the tour by friends. Wimbledon was his first major. For perspective: he was born in the same year as John McEnroe, who had already won the last of his seven major titles at that point.

  Because it was virtually impossible to talk to the players on the Wimbledon grounds—we were literally threatened with loss of credentials if we did so—Finn had gotten Schultz’s hotel phone number. Each night, after Schultz had played another forty-five minutes against Aaron Krickstein before being delayed by rain, Finn would call him from the media room. By Thursday, with the match tied at two sets apiece, everyone in the room was listening to Finn’s nightly chats with Schultz.

  “Looked like you served pretty well today,” Finn would say.

  He would listen and take notes and then follow up. Alfano and I (yes, we were instigators) egged Finn on. “Ask him about the point at 2–3, 15–30,” we’d say. “That was a great backhand down the line.”

  The absurdity of filing each night on a tennis matc
h that wouldn’t end wasn’t lost on anyone in the room—including Finn, who took it all in good humor. “Long as he’s in the tournament, I’m getting paid,” he said. And he was still in the tournament, even if he hadn’t won a match yet.

  When Schultz finally won the match in five sets on Friday, we all let out a cheer so Bud could hear us in the background when Finn got him on the phone. “Tell the guys I said thanks,” said Schultz, who also understood how comical it all was. He lost in the second round but had one of the great one week/two match runs in tennis history.

  It was on Tuesday, during another rain delay, that I met two tennis agents who I ended up becoming friendly with over the years. Up until then, I had thought Donald Dell represented most tennis players on the planet simply because his company, ProServ—which had many of the world’s top players—was based in Washington, D.C. IMG, which actually had more top players and was bigger than ProServ, was in Cleveland.

  One player ProServ represented was Gabriela Sabatini, who in 1985 was thought to be the Next Thing in women’s tennis. She was from Argentina and she was only fifteen, but it was clear that she was going to be a gorgeous woman and that she could play. At the 1984 U.S. Open, because she was seen as a rising star, she was brought into the interview room even after losing to Helena Suková. She was shy and sweet and spoke decent English for a teenager, especially one being asked to talk to a bunch of grown-ups, most of whom spoke no Spanish.

  Since the Open was her first tournament as a pro, she would be receiving her first check—for about $8,000, as I remember. Someone asked her what she planned to do with the money.

  “I just got a leetle dog,” she said. “I will buy him a present.”

  By the following spring, when I went to Paris, Sabatini had grown from about 5'4" to 5'9" and was crushing the ball from the backcourt. She was seeded fourteenth at the French Open, and everyone wanted to write about her. Her agent was Dick Dell, Donald’s younger brother. I spent most of the first week of the tournament negotiating with Dick and the WTA for some one-on-one time with Sabatini. This was generally unheard of during a major tournament, but Dell, being Washington-based, was keenly aware of the Washington Post.

  Finally, after Sabatini had easily won her third-round match, I was told that after she played her next round, if she won, I would be given a few minutes alone with her in the players’ lounge after she returned from the interview room. Dell would meet me in the hallway outside the interview room door so he could escort me there—since, of course, media weren’t supposed to be in the players’ lounge.

  Fine. Sabatini won and I went to find Dell as ordered. Standing there waiting for her to finish in the interview room, I started thinking how I could try to make her comfortable. Dell had told me that this would be her first one-on-one interview in English and that she had only done one or two in Spanish. Finding common ground with a fifteen-year-old girl would not be easy.

  Finally, as Dell was introducing us, I hit on it: the dog. We walked into the players’ lounge and found a quiet table in the corner. I congratulated Sabatini on making the quarterfinals. She thanked me.

  “So,” I said, readying my make-the-kid-comfortable opening question, “Last year at the Open you said you were going to buy your new dog a gift with your prize money. What did you end up buying him?”

  Sabatini stared at me, saying nothing. Maybe she hadn’t understood me. So I started to ask the question more slowly. “Your dog, you said—”

  “The dog died!” she shrieked, bursting into tears. “He died before I got home! Run over!”

  She was sobbing uncontrollably. People came running: WTA officials, security people, other players, Dick Dell. What in the world had I done to this child in thirty seconds to cause her to start wailing uncontrollably?

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I blubbered, pretty much wanting to cry myself. “I didn’t know. She said her dog died…”

  “You brought up the dog!” Dick Dell screamed. “Are you crazy?”

  “I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know…”

  Sabatini was calming down. Later she would tell me that she saw a look in my eyes that told her how horrified I was by what had happened. She insisted she was okay, that the interview could continue. It was actually quite brave of her. Needless to say, try as I might, try as she might, the next fifteen minutes were torture. I finally decided to cut my losses, thanked her, apologized for the hundredth time, and fled.

  As it turned out, the most interesting quote for that story—which I did finally write just before Sabatini played Chris Evert in the semifinals—came from an agent named Phil de Piccioto, who at the time ran Advantage’s women’s division and, as such, represented Steffi Graf.

  “We think when it’s all said and done, Graf will be a better player than Sabatini,” de Piccioto said. Graf was also fifteen at the time, but not as glamorous or as highly ranked. Of course, she would go on to win twenty-two major titles to Sabatini’s one, so de Piccioto was right. But when he saw the quote in print he was furious with me.

  “How could you quote me on that?” he said.

  “You said it.”

  “I know I said it, but I wish you hadn’t quoted me.”

  “Why? Don’t you believe it?”

  “Of course I believe it. But when Sabatini reads that there’s no way I’ll ever get her as a client.”

  I had completely missed that angle. It is one agents are always thinking about: she may not be my client now, but someday her contract will be up and maybe I can steal her. Such was life in the agent business.

  UNLIKE HIS YOUNGER BROTHER, Donald Dell was anything but soft-spoken or low-key. He was born to be an agent. My first encounter with him had come much earlier at Washington’s local tournament, then known as the Washington Star International, since the Star, which was Washington’s afternoon newspaper until it went out of business in 1981, was the title sponsor.

  I was covering the Star International shortly after returning to the sports staff, following two years of covering cops and courts, first in Washington, D.C., and then in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Someday I should write a book about the cast of characters I encountered during my time in Prince George’s. Let me put it this way: it was almost impossible to stay off the front page covering that beat.

  I had gone back to sports in the summer of ’79, even though Bob Woodward, who was then the Post’s metro editor and had become my mentor, had strongly counseled me not to do it.

  “You have a chance to become a great reporter,” Bob said (actually he said reporder in his very strong Midwestern accent). “Don’t blow it on sports. If you go back there, you’ll never be heard from again.”

  He was, I believe, exaggerating to make a point. Woodward and I had become close while I was researching a story on police corruption in Prince George’s County. I think—no, I know—he was stunned that someone who had potential as a reporder would even consider leaving serious repording for sports. But George Solomon had offered me the job I had dreamed of when I was in college: covering Maryland in football and basketball—and thus the entire ACC—for the Post. I couldn’t resist.

  When I told Woodward what I had decided, he was shocked. “Look, Bob, I’m twenty-three,” I said. “I love sports and I know I can do this well. When I’m a little older, if you still want me, I’ll come back. But I need to find out if I can do this.”

  That was when he made the comment about never being heard from again. Which, frankly, pissed me off a little bit. So I made him a bet: my byline would appear on the sports front every day for the first ten days I was back in sports. There was a slight fix involved on my end—Solomon had already told me my first assignment would be covering the Star tennis tournament. Unless I wrote really badly, that just about guaranteed me seven straight days on the sports front.

  Woodward took the bet. The stakes: loser had to go out, buy lunch, and deliver it to the winner in the newsroom.

  I wrote a Sunday advance on the Star that made the front
. I went out to the tournament site on Sunday and tracked down a little-known player named Pat DuPre, who had just made it to the Wimbledon semifinals. That took care of day two. The next seven—tournament play—would be easy. I would worry about the tenth day once the tournament was over.

  In those days, Donald Dell was the Washington Star tournament. Although he didn’t have the title of tournament director—his pal John Harris did—he ran the tournament. He represented just about all the top players who showed up to play (often as part of their ProServ deals), he sold most of the sponsorships, and he did the color on the weekend telecasts of the event.

  Back then, PBS televised the summer circuit, showing one semifinal on Saturday, the final on Sunday. Bud Collins did the play-by-play. Dell did the color.

  The way the tournament worked, two quarterfinals were played on Thursday, two more on Friday. The Thursday quarterfinal winners were Corrado Barazzutti, an Italian clay courter (the tournament was played on clay) and Argentina’s José Luis Clerc, who would rise to be the number five player in the world. The Friday winners were two Americans: Brian Gottfried and Gene Mayer.

  Guess which match PBS wanted for a one o’clock start on Saturday?

  There was just one problem: not only had Mayer and Gottfried both played Friday while Clerc and Barazzutti rested, Mayer had played doubles alongside his older brother Sandy until almost midnight. Mayer also had a history of cramping, especially in hot weather, and a one o’clock match in Washington in July was not going to be played in cool, nonhumid weather.

  So, naturally, the two Americans were on court in 95-degree heat at one o’clock while Collins and Dell (who represented both players) talked about what great guys they were to the TV audience.

  The first set was terrific tennis, Gottfried winning a tiebreaker. The second set not so much: Mayer cramped. He could barely hobble to the net to shake hands.