TENNIS

     Friday, April 4, 1997

     Newk leads the "big kid" Philippoussis to
     water

     By GERARD WRIGHT

     Eyes on the prize ... although relieved to be playing in Australia, Mark Philippoussis did terminal
     damage to one of his racquets when he became frustrated during Davis Cup practice in Adelaide
     yesterday. Photo by TIM CLAYTON

     The first title. The second Rolex. The second Ferrari. The first death of a close friend.
     The first injury. The first crisis.

     By the first weekend of the Australian Open in January, Mark Philippoussis had found his
     career growing pains almost unbearable.

     "I wasn't feeling very crash hot about it," he said yesterday of his burgeoning tennis
     career, and the attention that came with it. "I had some thoughts about stopping for the
     year. Lots of things were happening."

     John Newcombe, the Australian Davis Cup captain, believed he had seen it all before,
     with Pat Rafter in the summer of 1994-95, and its immediate aftermath. "... all of the
     media attention, the expectations of the media, family and friends".

     "This time", he says of Philippoussis, "I think it got to the point where it started to
     suffocate him, and you rebel against this thing called tennis, which you see as the cause of
     all this pressure."

     The first person who would have caught some of the bullets for Philippoussis after he
     returned to Melbourne last November, sacked another coach, in Peter McNamara, and
     soothed the foaming media waters was his manager, the late Brad Robinson, of
     Advantage International.

     Robinson died in October last year from cancer, during the week that Philippoussis won
     his first professional tournament.

     "He had a real confidante there," Newcombe said of Robinson. "Brad had taken a lot of
     time to get to know Mark as a person. Mark is a shy young bloke and he doesn't trust
     people easily."

     Robinson was one that he did. The indications from Melbourne are that there remains a
     vacuum in that area of Philippoussis's professional life, at least.

     Newcombe describes himself as "the friendly uncle" in this case. He sat down with
     Philippoussis outdoors for 45 minutes, outside the players' lounge at Melbourne Park
     during the first weekend of the Australian Open. He had a feeling, he said, that
     Philippoussis was enduring "a bit of a crisis".

     Which is not to say that he sugar-coated his answer after he heard Philippoussis out. "At
     the end of it, I suggested to him to become a plumber," Newcombe claimed.

     "At the moment", he recalls telling Philippoussis, "you're wasting your time and everyone
     else's - you aren't happy, so why not go and do something you're happy with."

     Newcombe, the son of a dentist speaking to the son of a former senior bank official, says
     it wasn't supposed to be a blue-collar sledge. "It wasn't meant to be insulting, but you
     should simply think about not playing."

     Philippoussis is now ranked 24th in the world. In the past two months, he has beaten three
     top-10 players - Andre Agassi, Carlos Moya, the Australian Open finalist, and Wayne
     Ferreira. He also won his second professional tournament, in Scottsdale, Arizona, as well
     as delivering the fastest serve in the recorded history of men's professional tennis, at 228
     km/h.

     Twenty years young, he appears to be ever more comfortable in the company of his
     Davis Cup teammates. Asked yesterday during a press conference if he felt his serve
     was in working order, he deferred, jokingly, to his peers. "Uh ... guys?" And then, "I think
     I've been serving OK."

     Twenty years young, his toys are exotic and expensive. In October he bought a Ferrari
     248 convertible in Europe. In January he traded up to a 355, which sells in Australia for
     around $280,000.

     "A big kid," Pat Rafter said of his doubles partner to an American reporter. "He's still
     enjoying his childhood."

     That includes listening, but not being told, during his chat with Newcombe.

     "I planted some seed, but he needed some time to make a decision within himself,"
     Newcombe says now.

     "With that decision - you can lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink - the decision
     has to come from inside of Mark. It has to be from inside his own guts.

     "I wouldn't like to read that I changed his life. He has to do that himself."

     The proof of that will be the next six months - three grand slams, and what looms as the
     inevitable Davis Cup semi-final clash with the US and Pete Sampras, the bete noir of
     Philippoussis, as well as, Newcombe believes, his mirror image at the same age.