Davis Cup strikes again. The tie that I was able to see today, between the U.S. and Switzerland, has already put us through a roller-coaster ride of nerves and courage in one match, and given us the stunner of the year thus far in the second. If you’re looking for an example of the team competition bringing out the best in someone, look no farther than John Isner and the way he closed out Roger Federer today. His scorching return winners in the last game were the most surreally brilliant moments of 2012.
Our tennis memories wouldn’t be quite as vivid without the surprises and the emotion that Davis Cup throws at us four times a year. My earliest DC recollections were of John McEnroe bringing the U.S., in his brawling, torturous way, back to prominence in the competition in the highly nationalistic, Reaganite early 1980s. As a junior high-schooler, I got up at 5:00 A.M. one morning to watch a McEnroe Davis Cup win from Australia, and then proceeded to carve the scores, complete with Johnny Mac’s and his opponent’s names (I think it was Peter McNamara), into my wooden desk in 7th grade English class. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this marked the apex of my tennis fandom. I don’t think I’ve done any score carving since, anyway.
The one I remember best of all, though, was seeing Frenchmen Henri Leconte and Guy Forget tree their way past Pete Sampras and a heavily favored U.S. team in Grenoble in 1991, and then lead a conga line right out of the arena. I saw the clinching match with my dad, in a dormitory TV room at my sister’s college. We were, naturally, the only people watching. Davis Cup is the great secret of the hardcore tennis fan. Others tune in for the Grand Slams, but, at least in the U.S., we’re left alone for the Cup. And that can be OK, too, as I found out a few years ago at the final in Portland. Below is a piece on that tie that went up on Tennis.com yesterday, as part of a favorite Davis Cup memories package.
See my Racquet Reaction to Mardy Fish’s predictably wild win over Stan Wawrinka today here.
The last Davis Cup tie that I attended was the 2007 final in Portland, between the U.S. and Russia. It was an exceptionally dreary early winter weekend even for that part of the country. I remember five days of mist, low clouds, slick streets, and no sunshine. The song that kept running through my mind was the Talking Heads’ “Cities,” an ominous drone about a town that’s “dark, dark in the daytime,” and where “the people sleep, sleep in the daytime.”
It seemed to describe Portland, where I saw nary a soul downtown even on a Saturday afternoon, to a T. The final, which was held in a cement-heavy, minor-league hockey arena that the NBA’s Trail Blazers had long ago left behind, was sold out; but there wasn’t a whole lot of local interest in the final. Braving the rain on the two-block walk from my hotel to an auditorium where the draw was being held, I was accosted by a TV reporter and cameraman who were searching desperately for a tennis fan to interview about the big event. They laughed when I told them that I was also with the media; the two people they’d just tried had worked for the USTA.
Everything was different once you got inside that weekend: Gray turned to technicolor; chilly wind gave way to mass body heat. The draw ceremony, welcomingly warm, was mobbed with fans and photographers, though my most lasting memory of it was seeing the American team, led by Andy Roddick, blow past a hesitant Russian squad and take the first elevator upstairs. In my mind, it set the tone for the U.S.’s sweep.
It was equally warm and celebratory in the arena. There was a light show, there was a marching band, there were billowing Old Glories, there were half a dozen men dressed as Uncle Sam, there were chanting Netheads in red, white, and blue, there was the theme from Star Wars booming through the stadium as the players were announced. There was also a witty reporter who leaned over to me as the music blared and the lights flashed and said, “That’s what you have to love about the USTA: The modesty and restraint.”
It was the same in the mornings at the official Davis Cup hotel downtown. The rest of Portland might not have had a clue, but half of the tennis-loving American public seemed to cram itself into the breakfast room each morning. On Saturday morning, when Bob and Mike Bryan were set to clinch the U.S.’s first title in 12 years, they walked though the lobby to a standing ovation. I thought I even heard a young woman squeal, upon catching sight of their father—who was, naturally, in a red, white, and blue sweat suit—“Oh my God, that’s Wayne Bryan!”
The sound I remember most, though, was the team’s beery chant after it was all over that afternoon— “U.S.A! U.S.A!” they boomed in unison as they staggered their way toward the interview room. After seven years together, this generation of American men had validated themselves at last. If no one knew it on the streets of Portland, that only made sense in a way. As that weekend showed me again, in this country our sport lives—warmly, happily—in its own comfortable cocoon. It had never felt so nice to be included there.