!Pat Mornin', everyone. I'm shore glad that we at Tennis.com have such capable correspondents in the desert (Steve Tignor, of Concrete Elbow fame, and our own Andrew Burton) at the BNP Paribas Open, because it's freed me up to work on a substantial project for Tennis, the mothership: US Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe's Birmingham Diary. This will run in the July issue, and take you behind the scenes at the recent Davis Cup tie.
Would the material have been better if Roger Federer had represented Switzerland, as originally planned? I don't know. I do know that reviewing over 20 typed pages of my transcript with McEnroe, I've got loads more material - and excellent material at that - than I can possibly use. Well, the magazine's loss will be your gain, because I'll be able to publish the out-takes here, much like I did following me El Jon Wertheim and my extensive interview with Toni Nadal at last year's US Open.
A week ago Monday, I posted at ESPN (third item down) on McEnroe, who became the longest-serving Davis Cup captain in US history at Birmingham. I wrote the column as a tribute, partly because of McEnroe's Davis Cup record but also because I've always thought the world of Pat, going back to his early days as a fresh-out-of-college (Stanford University) journeyman, determined to make a mark on the pro tour despite having to operate in the rather long shadow cast by his older brother, John.
That shadow has never been as big a factor in Pat's life as an armchair psychologist might imagine. As he's told me of his decision to follow John's rather large footprints to Stanford, "Everyone said I was nuts, I was inviting comparisons to John, and that bar would be set pretty high. Well, the way I saw it I was going to be compared to John no matter what I did, so I might as well go and do what I want."
That's signature Pat McEnroe: realistic, shrewd, measured. . . much like he's been as Davis Cup captain. One of his great distinctions as DC captain is that he's never really upstaged his players (remember, he took over the job from John McEnroe - whose tenure as captain was as stormy and attention-grabbing as it was brief). He's a model of the stoic, low-key, decisive leader whose instincts are excellent. He eschews the big gamble or spectacular play and most of all he knows how to handle men - boys, actually, whom he's helped mold into men by creating a Davis Team spirit that hasn't been seen in the US since the days of Stan Smith, Arthur Ashe, and Bob Lutz.
If poetic justice would be served, Pat McEnroe's go-to guy in Davis Cup would have been. . . John McEnroe (although Andy Roddick does an awfully good job standing in), and it's a shame that due to (among other things) the intransigence of Jimmy Connors, John never did experience the degree of team solidarity and spirit that the current US squad personifies.
In the big picture, the shadow that John once cast was dispelled long ago. Pat has been a Grand Slam semifinalist (Australian Open), a Grand Slam doubles champ (Roland Garros); in addition to being the Davis Cup chief (his players like to call him "captain," or sometimes "P-mac"). He's also a fixture in the ESPN commentary booth and - for about a year-and-a-half now - head of the USTA's elite player development program.
Pat McEnroe is, inarguably, the most ubiqutious man in the US tennis establishment - both at the professional and recreational/fan-viewer level. The fly in the ointment is that the American game hasn't been in great shape since Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi stopped lacing them up. But McEnroe is working on that, too, in his role as head of player-development. It reminds me that I owe you an update on that issue, which I'll deliver sometime soon.
So let me go wade into my notes and transcripts on the Birmingham tie (Did you know that Mike Bryan gets so nervous before and during Davis Cup doubles matches that he pops Maalox left and right, and insists that Pat keep an extra tablet of the antacid tucked into a pocket on his US team jacket when he sits courtside to shepherd the Bryan boys through a match?).
So now you know. Enjoy today's tennis from Indian Wells, catch up with you later. . .
-- Pete