The Bulletin Magazine
August 24, 2000

It’s happened only once in the past 24 years and ought to stir pride in the breasts of every patriotic Australian. But you can appreciate how local tennis officials might actually dread the clash of two Australians in a Grand Slam final, particularly if it’s at the US Open, beginning on Monday and their names are Patrick Rafter and Mark Philippoussis - or even Lleyton Hewitt and Philippoussis.

The undisguised animosity between Rafter and Hewitt on one side and Philippoussis on the other, has led to an unprecedented crisis in Australian tennis. In effect, the first two have told the player nicknamed Scud he is unwanted in the team to play Spain in the Davis Cup final at Barcelona in December. Team captain John Newcombe seems to concur. To add to the Scud’s alienation, sections of the media that lauded his heroics at the 1999 cup final against France in Nice have treated him like a pariah.

In response, Philippoussis has knocked Barcelona off his schedule. It’s unlikely he’ll change his mind even if Rafter’s right arm drops off. He has chastised his teammates and Tennis Australia for failing to support him when he says, he was exhausted and injured and unable to play in the semi-final against Brazil. He hints that he may cancel plans to spend more time in his native Melbourne, since he feels more comfortable in Miami.

In such a context, it’s hard to imaging a more explosive match-up than a confrontation between Rafter and Philippoussis, whether it be in a tournament final or round one. Their last match, the 1998 US Open final, ended in controversy when Philippoussis took exception to Davis Cup coach Tony Roach sitting with the Rafter camp in the box reserved for players’ friends. The much admired Queenslander, who won his second US Open crown by beating Philippoussis in four sets, vigorously defended Roche, his part-time coach.

Only a year earlier, Rafter and Philippoussis had been close mates and doubles partners. The rift occurred when Philippoussis declined to make himself available for a 1998 cup tie against Zimbabwe at Mildura and severely criticised Newcombe after the captain dropped him from the rest of the year. Later, an uneasy truce between the players ended when the Scud’s 11th hour withdrawal from the Brazil tie provoked an angry rebuke from Rafter.

Despite the surge in his popularity last December, Philippoussis clearly trails in the PR stakes. He is not "one of the boys" - or one of the Brotherhood, as Australia’s cup squad has been dubbed. His friends tend to be outside tennis. Proud of his Greek-Italian ancestry, he has "Alexander the Great" tattooed on one arm, and is more likely to seek recreation on a Greek Island than on a beach at Bermuda (Rafter’s haunt) or Bondi.

Nobody should find fault with any sportsman cherishing his ethnic identity. Philippoussis’ problem is that, rightly or wrongly, his peers believe he doesn’t put Australia’s interests first. In April, when he pulled out of a tie against Germany because of calf strain, he made no effort to go to Adelaide to support the team. He was certainly spent by his Wimbledon exertions; in nine days he played 249 games, equivalent to five successive five-set matches. He may also have been troubled by a sore knee. He was remiss, however, in not keeping Newcombe informed of his difficulties. He failed to offer Rafter good wishes in the Wimbledon final and had no intention of barracking for the team in Brisbane.

"Unfortunately, Mark doesn’t embrace the Australian team culture" says Ashley Cooper, the 1958 Australian, Wimbledon and US champion. "More than any others, except perhaps the Spaniards, our players egg each other on. If Mark accepted that those, he’d get more support around the world from his fellow Australians. He seems to be more of a loner. In my days the Aussies tried to beat each other’s brains out, but we always got behind each other the rest of the time".

In Cooper’s era, Australian players were prepared to share a hotel room in London, as Cooper and Neale Fraser did, and then go out to play each other in the Wimbledon final. There’s no prospect of Rafter and Philippoussis ever doing that. As multimillionaires, they could each afford to stay in a royal suite if they wanted to, whereas Cooper and Fraser coped on the miserly expense allowance doled out to amateurs. "I think money causes some of today’s problems", says Cooper.

Sometimes the decisive factor is simply fear of lost earning potential. When Philippoussis played in Switzerland in February, he aggravated a niggling knee injury and missed two lucrative tournaments as a consequence. Because of his weight of 92kg, abnormally heavy for a tennis player, he is prone to injury. And long layoffs can destroy a player’s ranking, put him out of the richest events and finish his career.

A few old champions are not unsympathetic. They perceive Scud’s courage and court demeanor as in the game’s best traditions. While conceding that he and his highly strung father are not very good at relationships, they wonder whether some of the family’s concerns have been misunderstood and not enough allowance made for the sensitiveness of a young man of non-Anglo Celtic background from Melbourne’s less fashionable western suburbs.

For instance, Philippoussis was put in a bad light by the disclosure that at Wimbledon he’d asked to be shifted from the traditional Australian corner of the dressing room. A simple explanation could have been the space there was very crowded this year or that Scud sensed the antipathy of a few of his compatriots. "In any conflict there’s always two sides to the argument" says John Alexander. "It was a pity Pat Rafter made his comments, whether they were justified or not. It did seem to inflame the situation. It got to the point where more people should understand a little how Mark feels. He’s the odd one out. Pat appeared to question mark’s injury. It was, admittedly, the culmination of many things, but Mark did win that final for Australia, and when we played against Switzerland he was ill prior to the match and was definitely carrying a injury".

Alexander, who is chairman of Australia’s player development board, believes one way to ease the tension would be for the cup captain to be relieved of the responsibility of enlisting players,: he says. "You will have a number of players making themselves available for each match, and then the captain and the other selectors will make their choice. That way, personalities are kept out of it; the captain won’t have to entice players or get involved in the murkiness".

Alexander foreshadows more complications under the present system, because John Fitzgerald, the next captain, once briefly coached Rafter and is close to fellow South Australians Darren Cahill, Hewitt’s coach and Hewitt himself. "Mark could again feel he’s got some disadvantage," says Alexander. "Of course, he wouldn’t have, but he could feel that. We need a way of getting around it. At the same time the players have to be told they don’t pick the team. I think that would go a long way to making Mark feel a little better. Maybe, too, he should be encouraged to bring his own coach to a David Cup match, so he can have his own personal support".

Meanwhile, attempts will be made at the US Open to repair fences. Fraser, the former cup captain, who has always got on well with Philippoussis, will have a fatherly talk to him. It will be surprising if Fitzgerald and his sidekick, Wally Masur, don’t also approach him. With doubts about Rafter’s long-term fitness, it would be an awful shame if the mighty services of the 23 year old Scud were lost to Australia forever.