It isn’t often that you see a doubles player walk out to the service T, wave to the crowd, and take a quick bow after his team wins a first-round match on a small side court. But that’s what Israel’s Andy Ram did today at the U.S. Open. He was acknowledging the standing-room-only crowd that had lent he and his partner, Max Mirnyi, such strong, buzzing support on Court 6. Like the Chileans and the Japanese and the Italians and the Thais and every other group you can name, there’s a Jewish fan base in New York that makes itself heard, with claps, whistles, and loud foot stamps on the metal bleachers, when one of their own is playing.
“I love to come back here,” said Ram (at right in the picture above), his black hair cropped close to his skull, as we sat in a small interview room under Ashe Stadium. “I love the support here and through the United States. The atmosphere for sports is great, and I’ve always done well on the hard courts here.”
Ram, along with his longtime partner and fellow Israeli Jonathan Erlich, has won Masters events in the U.S., as well as the Australian Open, but never the big one in Flushing Meadows. “I don’t want to leave that one out,” he says with a laugh. He may have his best chance this year playing with Mirnyi, a towering figure, literally and figuratively, on the doubles circuit. The two, who are seeded No. 5, hooked up at the beginning of 2009 when Erlich was injured, and they plan to keep the partnership going until the end of the season.
While switching partners would normally be a life-defining moment for most career doubles specialists, it ranks relatively low on the totem pole of events in Ram’s life this year. Four months ago, the 29-year-old and his wife, Shiri—they had 600 guests at their Tel Aviv wedding in 2006, just so you know—had their first child, a son, Jayden. More famously, Ram was at the center of two international incidents where sport collided head on, and in ugly fashion, with politics this year. In February, after being barred the previous season, he became the first Israeli tennis player to compete in Dubai, when the UAE, after suffering worldwide embarrassment for denying a visa to the WTA’s Shahar Peer, allowed him into the country.
“That was huge, I thought,” Ram says. “Big for sports, big for the ATP because we fought for it, big for tennis, big for Israel. I thought we’d had a real breakthrough. I don’t believe sports and politics should mix at all. When you get out on the court, you should be there to play,” he adds, swinging his arm through the air with a smile as he elongates the word.
Alas, it would be one step forward and two steps back for his country’s sporting status. A couple of weeks later, authorities in Malmo, Sweden, decreed that the Davis Cup tie to be played against Israel at an indoor facility there, would be off-limits to all spectators. This was ostensibly done to protect the players from protesters in the Malmo area who were angry over Israel’s recent war with Gaza. The city has a large Muslim immigrant presence, and it was widely believed that its mayor, kowtowing to local politics, made the move to embarrass the visiting team and its country.
“I would say it was the worst thing that has ever happened in Davis Cup,” Ram says. “But it made us tighter as a team. The atmosphere was terrible, it was dead, like a practice. All we had were each other to pump each other up. We had no idea what was happening outside”—thousands of people protested—“but I know the court could have been secured. I live in a country that’s secured, so I know you can do it. ”
Whatever the reasons for the move, it backfired on the Swedish team. In one of the most dramatic tennis weekends in recent memory, Israel came back to win the Tie That No One Saw when Dudi Sela and Harel Levy won five-set matches on the final Sunday to give the team a 3-2 victory. “It hurt the Swedes more,” Ram says, “because they usually have a tough crowd to play against, they make a lot of noise.”
It was a very difference scene for Israel’s quarterfinal tie a couple months later against perennial powerhouse Russia. It took place in Tel Aviv before 11,000 screaming home fans.
“That was the most exciting day of my tennis career,” says Ram, who reunited with Erlich to clinch the shocking sweep of the Russians and send Israel to the first Davis Cup semifinal in the nation's history. “This was something special for the country, one of the most important sports events I think ever there. Everyone was talking about tennis, the Prime Minister called us, nobody could believe it.”
How long can miracles last? The Israelis will find out later this month when they venture into the most hostile territory—from a tennis perspective—you could find in Davis Cup: the clay of Spain. “We’ll see what happens,” Ram says with a smile. “It’s tough with Rafa, but we’ll give it a shot and do what we can in the doubles. I always love Davis Cup wherever it is. I’m very patriotic, and I can get a little nuts out there. It’s a different kind of adrenaline playing for your country than when you’re on tour.”
While its Davis Cup team has galvanized Israel, Ram says that it will be a while before his country becomes a sports-mad nation like the United States.
“There’s no tradition for sports there yet,” he says of his homeland, whose primary tradition during its 60 years of existence has been survival. “The government budget goes to security, and then education. Sport isn’t a religion there. We’ve spent our time building roads and cities. There are a lot of courts in Israel, but they’re mainly empty. There aren’t a lot of role models for athletes.”
Hearing this from Ram is to be reminded of the importance of tennis to the cultures of smaller countries. The international nature of the sport allows its players, unknown to 99 percent of Americans, to become major points of national pride. Dudi Sela, Harel Levy, Andy Ram, these guys are more significant in their country from a cultural perspective than, say, even Tiger Woods is in the U.S.
Could Ram and the Davis Cup team begin a sporting vogue in Israel? “I don’t like to say I’m a role model, but we are," Ram says. "You see kids coming up to you for autographs, you know you’re a role model.”
For now, Ram know only that sports can go two very different ways for his country. “Sweden was terrible for us, but maybe, like in Dubai, we can make athletics help connect the country to the rest of the world. Maybe we can just play."