professional, of course, all the major amateur tournaments and events were closed to him, including the Davis Cup. He returned to the Cup as captain of the team, and under his coaching they won fourteen matches, a better record than any of his predecessors. Trabert is a Midwesterner in the best sense of the term—solid, dependable, principled. He had collided with a generation of players who had a different and far less reverential concept of what it meant to play for the Davis Cup.
“I’m happy for you, Arthur,” Trabert told me. “You would have been my first choice, too. But good luck to you with some of these guys. It’s just not the way we were brought up.”
I liked him for saying that. On the other hand, we really were not of the same generation. Trabert was thirteen years older than me. I considered myself to be one of the younger guys, even though my attitudes and values were more of Trabert’s generation than McEnroe’s.
“Well,” I responded, “some of them certainly are high-spirited.”
“High-spirited? I can take high-spirited. But what’s been going on is really offensive. I find too much of the behavior distasteful. It’s just not fun anymore, Arthur.”
Trabert was progressive and fair, I knew, but he also had the deserved reputation of being a law-and-order man. I myself certainly believed in law and order, if the laws were just; but I thought I could sympathize more readily with the younger players, to whom I was closer in age and with whom I had played. Vitas Gerulaitis, for example, was a good friend. The previous summer, in 1979, Jeanne and I had rented a car with him for a week and driven from Munich to Kitzbühel. I had played against McEnroe twice in the 1979 Masters tournament at Madison Square Garden inNew York and admired the sheer genius of his play. “I’m a little closer in age to the players,” I told
Tennis
magazine, “so I’m hoping that my brand of friendly persuasion will work.” With my fingers crossed, I sincerely believed so.
In my day as a player, and for a long time after, Davis Cup play was the most exciting, the most demanding competition in the world of tennis. It remains probably the most challenging competition for the players involved. Almost every player would readily admit that playing for his country in the Davis Cup is much more nerve-wracking than competing for himself in a Grand Slam final, including Wimbledon. “It takes at least a week to prepare for the thing,” Boris Becker once said about a typical Cup series or “tie,” as it is called, “another week to play it, and a week to recover.”
In Cup play, the captain’s role can be crucial, especially as it has evolved in the United States. In some other countries, a committee chooses the players. The American captain selects the squad of players, and then sets the tone for the entire effort. The strong sense of responsibility I brought to Davis Cup play was keenly supported by my first captain, Bob Kelleher, and indeed by all the others I played under—George MacCall, Donald Dell, Edward Turville, Dennis Ralston, and Trabert. Kelleher, who went on to become a federal judge in Los Angeles, constantly emphasized the lofty ideals inherent in the Davis Cup that I had and still have. In fact, Kelleher seldom passed up a chance to let his players understand that no matter what the event—a Davis Cup match, a Grand Slam event, or a city tournament in the south of France—as team members we represented the United States of America. Therefore, we had an obligation to act accordingly. We not only had to try to win, but we had to try to win with grace. We could not besmirch our country’s honor. My father had brought me up to think exactly like that, and I would not have dreamed of behaving any other way—not in any tournament, but above all not in the Davis Cup, where I was representing all of America.
In 1980, I was well aware that I was taking over the U.S. captaincy at a particularly
“I’m happy for you, Arthur,” Trabert told me. “You would have been my first choice, too. But good luck to you with some of these guys. It’s just not the way we were brought up.”
I liked him for saying that. On the other hand, we really were not of the same generation. Trabert was thirteen years older than me. I considered myself to be one of the younger guys, even though my attitudes and values were more of Trabert’s generation than McEnroe’s.
“Well,” I responded, “some of them certainly are high-spirited.”
“High-spirited? I can take high-spirited. But what’s been going on is really offensive. I find too much of the behavior distasteful. It’s just not fun anymore, Arthur.”
Trabert was progressive and fair, I knew, but he also had the deserved reputation of being a law-and-order man. I myself certainly believed in law and order, if the laws were just; but I thought I could sympathize more readily with the younger players, to whom I was closer in age and with whom I had played. Vitas Gerulaitis, for example, was a good friend. The previous summer, in 1979, Jeanne and I had rented a car with him for a week and driven from Munich to Kitzbühel. I had played against McEnroe twice in the 1979 Masters tournament at Madison Square Garden inNew York and admired the sheer genius of his play. “I’m a little closer in age to the players,” I told
Tennis
magazine, “so I’m hoping that my brand of friendly persuasion will work.” With my fingers crossed, I sincerely believed so.
In my day as a player, and for a long time after, Davis Cup play was the most exciting, the most demanding competition in the world of tennis. It remains probably the most challenging competition for the players involved. Almost every player would readily admit that playing for his country in the Davis Cup is much more nerve-wracking than competing for himself in a Grand Slam final, including Wimbledon. “It takes at least a week to prepare for the thing,” Boris Becker once said about a typical Cup series or “tie,” as it is called, “another week to play it, and a week to recover.”
In Cup play, the captain’s role can be crucial, especially as it has evolved in the United States. In some other countries, a committee chooses the players. The American captain selects the squad of players, and then sets the tone for the entire effort. The strong sense of responsibility I brought to Davis Cup play was keenly supported by my first captain, Bob Kelleher, and indeed by all the others I played under—George MacCall, Donald Dell, Edward Turville, Dennis Ralston, and Trabert. Kelleher, who went on to become a federal judge in Los Angeles, constantly emphasized the lofty ideals inherent in the Davis Cup that I had and still have. In fact, Kelleher seldom passed up a chance to let his players understand that no matter what the event—a Davis Cup match, a Grand Slam event, or a city tournament in the south of France—as team members we represented the United States of America. Therefore, we had an obligation to act accordingly. We not only had to try to win, but we had to try to win with grace. We could not besmirch our country’s honor. My father had brought me up to think exactly like that, and I would not have dreamed of behaving any other way—not in any tournament, but above all not in the Davis Cup, where I was representing all of America.
In 1980, I was well aware that I was taking over the U.S. captaincy at a particularly
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