Tennis Weekly - December 16, 1999
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Australia's new dominion will be inscribed on this year's Davis Cup


In all their years together, on court and off, John Newcombe and Tony Roche had never kissed. But the taciturn Roche had been warned by his extrovert partner what would happen when they won the Davis Cup. "I'd been warning him for six years and I got him!" Newk grinned at the end of an emotional day at the Acropolis Congress Centre in Nice where Australia won its first Davis Cup final away from home since Cleveland in 1973 with a 3-2 win over France.

As the Australians bounced the day's big hero, Mark Philippoussis, in the air, Newcombe grabbed Roche, held him in a vice-like grip and planted a great big smacker on his cheek. As he said, it had been six years coming and it had been a rough road. Neale Fraser, a happy spectator in Nice, had led Australia to its last Davis Cup triumph in Melbourne against Sweden in 1986--the last final to be played on grass--and when the great doubles team took over in tandem, with Newcombe as captain and Roche in the less visible role of coach, expectations were high. Patrick Rafter was emerging as a real prospect as was Philippoussis and the Woodies--Mark Woodforde and Todd Woodbridge--were the best doubles team in the world. But it required faith and strong nerves to live through the nadir of 1996 when defeat at the hands of South Africa in Durban led to even greater ignominy in Budapest where Hungary, without a single top 100 player, won the relegation battle.

How far away all that seemed as Newcombe produced his glowing, grinning team at press conference after Philippoussis, who had not wanted to play Davis Cup only a year before, had produced the greatest performance of his career to defeat Cedric Pioline 6-3, 5-7, 6-1, 6-2 in the first reverse singles. With the Woodies having recovered from a nightmare start against Fabrice Santoro and Olivier Delaitre to give Australia a 2-1 lead after the second day, Philippoussis knew precisely what kind of job he had to do to shield 18-year-old Lleyton Hewitt from the burden of having to win a fifth rubber and went out and did it. Already a physical giant, this week on the Cote d'Azur had seen Mark grow from within.

"I've made some mistakes in the past but I've learned from them," he said. "Being here this week, being part of a team, eating and training together, has been special and I think we all felt something special was going to happen. And now, sitting here, with our names going on the trophy, like Newk said, it will be there for history. No one can ever change that. No one can ever rub our names off. We're there. Australia's won it. An incredible feeling. It's the best match I've ever played but it's also the best feeling of a win I've ever had in my life."

It took him a while--and there were valid reasons for that--but now he's got it. He's got what it means to be an Aussie sporting hero. And the way he carried it off did his nation proud. Afterwards Newcombe was asked whom he would have left off his four man team if Patrick Rafter had been fit. Smiling, Newk took the fifth. But there was a good chance Philippoussis would have been the odd man out because, throughout a long campaign, Hewitt had done more than anyone could have reasonably expected of a teenage rookie, beating Todd Martin on a hardcourt in Boston and Yevgeny Kafelnikov in a deciding match on grass in Brisbane, proving as he did so that he relished the big occasion.

But as soon as Rafter's shoulder injury ruled him out--the whole team lined up to speak to him in the middle of the Melbourne night after they had won--Philippoussis, having healed the rift with Newcombe, was a most welcome replacement. His form and work ethic in practice quickly endeared him to his captain and Newcombe was urging me to go and see how Philippoussis was hitting the ball as soon as we left the draw on Thursday. But practice is one thing and too often in the past Philippoussis had failed to hang tough throughout a long match, squandering his physical gifts with a wandering mind. But not this time.

In the opening singles on Friday, he bludgeoned little Sebastien Grosjean to a straight-set defeat, simply overwhelming the tactically astute Frenchman with the relentless power of his hitting and willingness to get in and attack behind the second shot. The Australians had been favorably surprised by the quality of the clay court--not as slow as they feared--and the speed of the ATP balls and Mark's performance showed why.

Then Pioline kept the wildly excitable 10,000 capacity crowd--including about 2,000 green and gold clad Aussies complete with stuffed kangaroos--in full voice as he fended off Hewitt's heroic attempts to get back into each set he lost. The score of 7-6, 7-6, 7-5 hides the drama that lurked in each as Hewitt, throwing himself into the fray as if his life depended on it, fought back from 1-5 in the first tiebreak, double-faulted on his own set point at 7-6 and then finally lost it 9-7. In the next breaker Pioline was hauled back to parity once again from a 5-1 advantage and had to win it 8-6. Then, most amazingly of all, Hewitt drew level after Pioline had led 5-1 in games. A flood of winners from the little Australian including a great forehand service return winner took Pioline's serve for 5-2 and another blockbuster--crosscourt off the backhand which terminated a long rally--helped towards the second break for 5-4. Having leveled, Hewitt piled on the pressure, reaching break point no less than four times at 5-5 only for the 1993 U.S. Open finalist to come up with some wonderful volleying behind good first serves, once dealing with a nasty, dipping service return with an instinctive half volley that surprised Hewitt into offering an easy put-away on the second shot. Pioline prevailed, showing just why he has become the mainstay of such a successful team over the past few years and then promptly broke in the twelfth game to finally put an end to this impressive teenage resistance.

So, fittingly, the tie would still be alive on Sunday and, for a while, it seemed that Guy Forget's team would be sleeping sounder on the Saturday night. For almost a set Todd Woodbridge could hardly put a ball in court. He dropped serve twice against Santoro and Delaitre and even though, in a harbinger of things to come, the Woodies managed to break Delaitre's serve once, they were rushed out of the first set 6-2. "I didn't understand what was going on because I had never missed a ball by more than a foot in practice and now I was missing by ten," said Woodbridge afterwards. "And I wasn't that nervous, either. Eventually I said to Mark, 'We need to talk more because although I don't feel as if I am rushing, I obviously am,' and after that it got better."

Not before Delaitre had served for the second set, however. But some good returns put him under pressure and when the Woodies reached break point, he put in a short second serve which Woodforde, who remained rock-solid throughout, dealt with appropriately. Even for a team as experienced as these five-time Wimbledon winners, two sets to love down might have been too big a mountain to climb on a surface that has rarely been kind to them. But, buoyed by that escape, they struck back with a vengeance, forcing errors out of Delaitre's suspect volley and running off fourteen points out of the next fifteen to take the set 7-5 and lead 1-0 in the third. The French pair never recovered. Two double faults from Delaitre enabled them to take a 4-2 lead and from then on the stuffed kangaroos had a lot of jumping about to do as their owners acclaimed more and more Woody winners. For the red-headed Woodforde, now 34, it was very close to being a swan song. He might not play Davis Cup next year, having just one more ambition--to win doubles gold for Australia again, as he and Todd had done in Atlanta, when Sydney hosts the Olympics next September. Even if that doesn't happen, Woodforde can look back on one of the finest and most satisfying achievements of a long and distinguished career. The doubles, yet again, had proved crucial and the psychological balance had swung heavily Australia's way by the time the Woodies wrapped up a four set victory with hitherto unsuspected ease.

Certainly it put a spring in the step of the other Mark and Pioline quickly realized that the man he had already lost to twice, back in 1996 and '97, was an even more formidable opponent now. Like the French doubles team, Philippoussis was so dominant early on that he, too, came within a point of taking a two-sets-to-love lead when he reached set point at 5-4. But Pioline conjured up a great stop volley and then made a split second decision to take his racquet out of the way as the Aussie raced onto it and flicked up a ball that landed long. A game later, Philippoussis put himself in trouble with a double fault as he started to feel the pressure of Cedric's increasingly penetrating service returns and then, for almost the only time in the match, failed to move his feet and put a forehand long. The crowd, a sea of red, white and blue, waved flags and huge, fluffy pom-poms and threatened to raise the rainbow-contoured roof of the Acropolis. But maybe Mark's ancestor's had competed at that other Acropolis because the big man refused to be upset by this French counterattack and looked perfectly at home, coolly passing Pioline off the backhand to force an early break in the third. Two games later, an explosive forehand pass set him for another break and suddenly the Frenchman was wilting under the onslaught. The set was gone 6-1 before he knew it and as power-packed winners off both flanks continued to batter his defenses it became obvious a Gallic dream was dying. The fourth set belonged to Philippoussis 6-2 and, afterwards, he admitted that he had been desperately nervous serving that final game. "Just two more points, then just one more point, I kept saying to myself and then I can do what I like. Then it won't matter." You could almost hear the concentration creaking at the edges of his skull as he spoke because the mental grip he had kept on himself had been the most impressive factor of this 23-year-old's performance. He had never played at that level before, never, one suspects, wanted anything so much and he gave a further, fascinating glimpse into his state of mind when he said, "The crowd really didn't bother me. I heard them but it seemed like a distant noise. The only things I heard clearly were the line calls, the ball on my racquet and the pounding of my heart." No doubt now that it is a big heart and one that will serve Australia well in the future.

In the true spirit of the occasion, the crowd reinforced the ITF's decision to play the fifth rubber by staying to cheer Grosjean to a meaningless victory over Hewitt who was obviously past caring. No matter, 9,000 people were still in the stadium, holding up play with laughter, bugle calls and Mexican waves and hiding their disappointment like the true sports they are. It all started 100 years ago and, in its centenary year, it is proved itself to be bigger, better and healthier than ever, this very special competition called Davis Cup.