Tennis Week
December 21, 1995
American Ascension
By Bud Collins

"Did the earth move?"
That oft-quoted Hemingway line from "For Whom the Bell Tolls," uttered by Robert Jordan, the brave American a long way from home and out of his element, is a query to his Spanish lover regarding the seismic reverberations of their first tryst.

It would be unreasonable to compare the bravery of a soldier in the Spanish Civil War with that of a tennis player. Pete Sampras, also in the wrong neighborhood, didn't lay down his life for his comrades and a cause as Jordan did in the novel. Yet it seemed that for three days the usually hostile European earth did move for him, giving way to his moxie in a very gutty, demanding performance that, with the Davis Cup at stake, ranks up there alongside any American's abroad, at least since Stan Smith tripled to beat Romania in Bucharest 23 years before.

Czar Peter the Great, possibly the most imposing figure in Russian history, a mover, innovator and warrior who ruled the country for 43 years, until 1725, might well have admired current Pete the Great ("don't call me Peter") whose own reign lasted only three days. But it probably made former Comrade Lenin-under-glass twirl in his tomb at nearby Red Square.

Nothing was deader in this town than Lenin (though his blue polka dot tie is natty) and the clay court that was laid and tailored specifically to embalm the Americans. But Sampras, in a totally unexpected three-way stretch, drove his troika over Andrei Chesnokov, then Yevgeny Kafelnikov, and, in between, with Todd Martin on board, over Andrei Olhovskiy and Kafelnikov, too. Pete was the triple threat for Captain Tom Gullikson's gang such as the United States hasn't ridden since John McEnroe, and, before that, Stan Smith. His three points were just enough.

The label "triple-threat" used to be applied to football greats in the more individualistic days before specialization. Backs like Sammy Baugh who excelled at running, passing and punting. A tripler in tennis, winning both singles and the doubles, is worth his weight in Davis Cup, and will guarantee one, as Pete did. Not to overlook staunch assistance from grand handyman Martin.

This was the making of Pete Sampras as the United State's main man in Cuppin' around, becoming suddenly, after an only so-so previous three years, an unpredicted take-charge guy, the No. 1 who acted the part in that rougher sector or the world beyond the reach of slinky, the ATP computer.

Sampras, saying afterwards, "I never thought about Davis Cup as a kid, didn't even know about it as a junior," just may have started a romance with Dwight Davis' gaping silver bauble as he made the ground shake within the tumultuous Moscow barn called Olympic Stadium. Tremors from his shotmaking and combativeness toppled all Russians, players and patrons, while he lugged the United States to a 31st Cup, 3-2.

"I really got into it," he reflected. "The huge crowd, the noise and flags, so different from any other tennis. I was playing for other people, my coach, Tim (Gullikson), for Tom (Gullikson) and my teammates...and my country. It was on my shoulders and I liked it."

He had come well beyond the "devastating" baptism in 1991 -- "overwhelmed by nerves and the crowd" -- at uproarious Lyon, the defeats by Henri Leconte and Guy Forget as France rose spiritedly to a 3-1 triumph, until Moscow Pete had shown no particular keenness for the nationalistic hurly-burly, his singles record wasn't even fair for a great player: 9-5.

"I wasn't a John McEnroe, really up for it to play whenever I could. I got a lot of criticism when I didn't play, like when we lost to Australia in '93, but I was thinking more about my own schedule."

That mood appeared to change on the chilly, snow-flecked first day of December as a frenetic, noisemaking mass of 16,000 homebodies crammed the double-balconied, curtained-off area surrounding the court in the colossal 42,000-seat concrete canyon. Regardless of the court and Lenin, there was nothing dead about the Moscow atmosphere when my British Air flight descended. The old Cold War rivalry was back for a few days, as Americans and Russians clashed for a first time in tennis. Tickets, scaled at $50 to $10 (serious cash here), had been sold out for weeks, and the populace was hungry to beat the U.S.A. in something -- anything.

Referee Stefan Fransson made sure that the court wasn't flooded to aid mudder Chesnokov as it had been to give the natives sea legs and help them stun Germany in the semifinals. Chesnokov's charming coach, Tatiana Naumko, responsible for the heavy dew, smilingly denied it all: "The roof must have leaked."

But the presence of a clay rectangle within seemed to the loyalists enough of a dirty trick to undo Sampras. They knew Pete had been a clay pigeon in 1995 (5-5), a first-round loser in Rome and Paris to whozits Fabrice Santoro and Gilbert Schaller, and that he was now in a different world from Centre Court and Flushing Meadow, a speed trap of sepia-toned soil where his No. 1 ranking meant as much as a swimming gold medal in the Sahara.

The customers were ready to pounce on Sampras with the wily, undying Russian bear Chesnokov as their surrogate, a man who had been tapped by Prez Yeltsin for the Order of Honor. A medal usually reserved for military heroes, it was Chessie's after his surrealistic nine-match point stand against Michael Stich to snuff out the heavily favored Germans, 3-2.

They wanted to see the Yank fall, and Pete obliged dramatically, though perhaps a second or two too late for their edification, as well as spunky Chesnokov's. His collapse with cramps occurred flabbergastingly as he was lifting his fists in victory. His legs were going...going -- and abruptly he was gone, a flattened fighter carried to the dressing room by his handlers. It was a fantastical double knockout, only the five-set decision went to Sampras, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-4, giving the United States a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series.

"Maybe...if I could get that last shot back," said the noblest Russian, Chesnokov, elder of the series at 29, who has played for his country since 1983, grinding it out on legs and bottom, "Maybe...but I didn't."

As the 3-hour, 40-minute wowser unfolded to its penultimate point, 5-4, 40-15, Sampras serving, Chessie's people pleaded for him to hang on as if Sampras were a Titanic lifeboat, just as he'd done in eroding another Wimbledon champ Michael Stich in September. Sampras served to Chesnokov's backhand and charged, only to flub a backhand volley.

Roars, horns, bangers (inflated plastic tubes that looked like baguettes and sounded like tin pans when clapped together) raised the roof. Red-white-and-blue flags flapped maniacally, both the Russian version and those relatively few lofted by the support troop American fans in star-spangled caps, and inspired by a silver-haired Gabriela, indefatigable hornblower Renee Rucker of Gladys, Virginia.

Would Chessie repeat himself? Has there ever been one game at the summit to equal his unflinching blockade of Stich? Consuming 20 minutes, 24 points, nine deuces, their 14th game of the fifth set turned the semifinal away from Germany and toward Chesnokov and Russia. Again and again, Stich served only one stroke away from reaching a final against the United States that would have been held in Germany.

Nine straight match points: Chessie repelled every one, if not as violently as the Russians stopped the Germans at the outskirts of Moscow in 1941, at least as definitively. Stich started his agonies by missing a backhand volley identical to Sampras's. An omen?

Now, match point two for Sampras, a phenomenal rally, Pete going for the jugular and Chessie thwarting him with incredible retrieving, swat after swat. It appeared finished by a Sampras smash -- but the sprinting Russian transformed it into a splendid lob, and on they went to the 22nd stroke. An all-or-nothing swing for Sampras, as it turned out.

His cramps began pinching at 3-3 in the fifth and Pete knew he had to get it over -- "Be more aggressive!" Capt. Gullikson urged at that changeover. He came in one last time, lashing a net-skimming forehand, and Chessie was running, running...somehow reaching the ball with both hands...making contact...but unable to propel it back into Pete's court.

"If he had...I don't know. I don't think I had another shot in me," recalled Pistol Pete, his barrel empty. It was over, and so was he. "I had this strange sensation like nothing that ever happened to me on a court. Cramps in my right hamstring and left groin. I lost control of my legs, and the next thing I knew they were dragging me away."

As Chesnokov looked for somebody to shake hands with, team physician Dr. George Fareed and trainer Bob Russo had Pete in their grips, removing him for treatment. Pete's legs had failed him but not his heart.

"That's Davis Cup," he said, a statement understood by anyone who's been through that wringer. "Emotional and physical exertion and exhaustion, the crowd tearing down your concentration...I'll never know if I could've played another point. I should've won it sooner." True enough. He had baselined firmly with Chesnokov, asserted himself enough at the net to arrive at 4-2, 40-15 in the fourth. A double fault started his slide toward a tie breaker, a strange overtime in which he lagged, 1-5, spurted to 5-5 -- two points from victory -- and threw it away on a double fault.

But as the cramps assaulted him in the fifth, and Chesnokov and the crowd intensified, Pete squirmed through a four-deuce game, dismissing a break point to 3-3. Bracing himself for a last thrust, he rolled up 10 straight points, from 3-4 to 5-4, and stumbled home.

One point in the U.S. pocket, but was this going to be a Sweden '94 rerun? Remember that 2-0 U.S. lead going up in the smoke of a Sampras leg injury, sustained in barely beating Magnus Larsson? Unwisely he tried to take on Stefan Edberg the third day, defaulting quickly. Gritty but futile, Larsson beat Todd Martin, and the Swedes went on to Moscow to win the Cup on the lickety-split carpet usually reserved for the ATP's Kremlin Cup stopover.

Too poor to put the brakes on rug-cutter Edberg with a slower court a year ago, the ARTA (All Russian Tennis Association) is flush with sponsorship money today. Thus the earth really moved, tons of it carted in from Sweden to give the Germans, then the Americans, adventures in quicksand-land at $70,000 a separate pop.

Not that impromptu construction of a home-court advantage is anything new. The United States, after nothing but grass for finals (20 of them) built a clay court in Cleveland in 1964 to hobble Australia, aka Roy Emerson and Fred Stolle. It didn't work. After that, 1969 and 1970, to successfully leave the dirtkickers of Romania (Ilie Nastase, Ion Tiriac) and Germany (Willie Bungert, Christian Kuhnke) behind, the same patch was transformed into the quickest of hard courts, suddenly prosperous in clay talent in 1990(Andre Agassi, Michael Chang), the United States took Australia's best, offense-minded Patrick Cash, out of the singles lineup by playing the dirty court card within St. Petersburg's Sundome to win comfortably.

This home loam was not exactly a stage for Sampras to emulate Mikail Baryshnikov at the Bolshoi a couple of miles distant. In fact our hero, swooning with not a second to spare on opening day, looked more like the all-time local ballerina, Anna Pavlova, in her beloved "Dying Swan" routine. But Pavlova always revived, and so did Pete for sensational encores.

"I'm not hurt like I was in Sweden," he said after being iced down and rehydrated to relieve the cramps."I'll play again."

Few guessed how soon. But Jim Courier, suffering tie-breaker doldrums, allowed Kafelnikov to inflate his confidence in a winning first set. Thereafter the slick 21-year-old blond was free and easy, and his glossy shotmaking kept Jim ever from a comfort zone, 7-6 (I), 7-5, 6-3, for a first day split.

That, said U.S. Capt. Tom Gullikson, made the middle-day doubles "huge" and his worries substantial, considering that he had no combination blooded in Cup play, and Kafelnikov and Olhovskiy were 5-2.

Go back a ways in this season-long cup scenario, and you'll grasp how unlikely it was for Pete to corner the Cup. Andre Agassi, a forlorn spectating face at courtside, was supposed to have one singles job. But he was out after pulling a pectoral muscle in beating Mats Wilander in the semifinal decision over Sweden.

Was he ready to play by December? Only Andre, who says "No," knows. His teammates were skeptical. What's the logical counter-play? You sign up impassive, pressure-neutralizing Michael Chang, who won the Cup on clay in 1990, competing fiercely whenever invited. In any other professional sport, you go after whatever help you can get -- an available pitcher, a quarterback, a point guard. Whoever.

Yes? No, says Capt. Gullikson, "I'm sticking with the guys who got me here." The captain's loyalty is "much appreciated by the guys," said Sampras. "We feel the same way."

How did the redoubtable Chang get lost in the shuffle? "We invited him to play the first two matches [France and Italy], and he turned us down," said Gullikson. "Next year it could be different. Obviously, Michael's a guy you'd like to have."

The Chang camp doesn't have quite the same picture. Michael felt left out when USTA Prez Les Snyder made the All-the-way-with-Pete-and-Andre pact prior to Italy without consulting him. Clearly Snyder envisioned a fast-lane final in Germany rather than scuffling in Muscovite muck. However, Pete's tour de force made it all academic.

But, Gullikson said, "After we beat Sweden at Vegas, and Russia upset Germany, I figured my best bets in singles were Andre and Jim Courier. I talked to Pete and asked him if he'd be willing to go to Moscow but only play doubles. He said he'd have to think about that one, but came back with, 'whatever it takes, I'm your man.'"

"I couldn't fault Gully," Sampras said, willing to do a one-day cameo. "Being objective I'd probably pick Andre and Jim, too, on clay."

Gullikson said, "OK, Andre drops out, so naturally it's Pete in singles. I know he can play better on clay than he has this year."

That brings us to Friday evening, first day, Sampras with a sore hamstring, but saying to Gullikson. "I'll play doubles if you want me. Whatever you need."

"Sleep on it, we'll talk in the morning," was Gullikson's response. A captain's option is to change a pre-announced team (Richey Reneberg and Martin in this case) up to one hour prior to 1 p.m. post time. Annoyed that the Russians had said he was conceding the match by using Martin and Reneberg, Gullikson also knew they might be right. And he had to have the match.

"We lost the Cup in the doubles," said Kafelnikov, also right in his post-script.

Doubles, generally ignored by the elite, has been a crap shoot for the United States since the days of Ken Flach-Rob Seguso, Rick Leach-Jim Pugh (the record, 4-4 since the last Cup in 1992). "We all talked it over," said Gullikson. "Reneberg, a great team man who doesn't let his ego get in the way, urged me to pick the strongest pair regardless. I decided I wanted the two biggest servers, Todd and Pete. But I waited until they hit Saturday morning. Pete was stiff, but said he could do it. At 12:30 I named them."

"I was really nervous at first, and maybe trying to do too much until Pete got loosened up," said Martin, broken immediately. Nevertheless, this spire of a spare part at 6'6" stood taller than ever, and that's been pretty tall, considering his clinching semifinal victory over Thomas Enqvist as stand-in for Agassi, the only time a sub has ever won a vital match for the United States.

Todd calmed, soon becoming brutal with two-fisted backhand returns from the left court. Pete's returns started humming, and their volleying was superior. Their elan exceeding the Russians' experience together, Pete and Todd delivered the critical go-ahead point, 7-5, 6-4, 6-3.

Kafelnikov double-faulted, then blew a volley as the Yanks caught up at 4-4. Sampras aced away a break point to 6-5. Kafelnikov, after double-faulting again, was nailed by Martin's set point return, and turned sullen and ineffective.

"Todd had a pulled abdominal muscle, but forgot about it in his big serving game," applauded Gullikson. That came in the second, Martin crashing out of 15-40 to 5-4 on crushing serves, two of them aces.

The role of one-man crowd in three acts, that he hadn't even considered a couple of weeks before, concluded with Pete's immaculate clincher, 6-2, 6-4, 7-6(4), over Kafelnikov. He called it, "considering the situation, Davis Cup, the Cup maybe on my shoulders, the best match I've played on clay."

Absolutely.

He was more attack-minded than customary -- "I have to do that if I'm going to win on European clay." His serve was mammoth (16 aces, three service winners in 15 serving games), his forehand murderous: down the line, crosscourt, inside-out (19 winners). Kafelnikov scrounged two points against serve in the first set, five in the second, finally grasped at five break points in the second game of the third, but nothing doing.

"Pete was getting tired," he said. "If I can win that third, who knows?" Pete agreed. "I couldn't let him do it" -- and didn't. Sampras slugged
.568, 64 winners of 111 points.

This was Sampras of Wimbledon slickness -- pirouetting touch volleys, elegant running forehands, onerous smashes and serves -- only he was a dirtkicking dandy, too, patient enough, a mixmaster of pace and spin from the backcourt to position the forehand blasts and rushes to the net.

Not since John McEnroe's two singles and a doubles (with Peter Fleming) in the 5-0 win over France in 1982 had an American tripled in the final. But merely 10 triples have been registered in Cup history when the tripler scored all the points. Henri Cochet in 1931 was the first, for France, 3-2 over Britain; Smith in 1972 the fifth, 3-2 over Romania; McEnroe in 1981 the ninth, 3-1 over Argentina; Sampras the 10th.

Two's company (but not enough). Three's a winning crowd, and Pete the Great came on like a crowd of Cossacks to clear the joint out.

Dwight Davis, the rich Harvard kid who gave the prize to the world in 1900, dreamed of scores of countries taking part and Cup winners spread across the earth. From the original starters, Britain and the United States, the tournament has multiplied to 115 countries in 1995. Alas, only nine have won the Cup, and Russia will have to wait.

Put in the perspective of Davis's admirable talent, a Russian break-through triumph rather than a U.S. 31st would have been a better story, heartening a troubled new democracy. Prez Yeltsin could have swilled vodka with his team from the Cup that has been drained of seas of victorious champagne.

Sadly for them, Pete the Great, wobbly but willing, was interested only in his own dreams and making the earth move for himself and his cohorts.