It was a brutal moment. The U.S. had just suffered a devastating loss in the ’04 Davis Cup Final to a Spanish team led by a raw hunk named Rafa in front of 25,700 loud, ecstatic Spaniards.
It was the kind of humbling defeat that could have crushed the not-yet-hefty psyches of Patrick McEnroe‘s young team — Andy Roddick, Mardy Fish and the Bryan Bros. So Patrick McEnroe immediately called his team out onto a nearby field for a lighthearted game of softball. Such a move was hardly shocking. After all, like Patrick, you, too, might be a sensitive soul if you were primarily known as the kid brother of the most explosive man in the annals of sport, and your most famous on-court moment was a devastating late-night five-set U.S. Open loss to the family nemesis — Jimmy Connors — a defeat that jumpstarted Jimbo’s storied run to the ’91 U.S. Open semis.
Our gentle and sometimes doe-eyed Davis Cup captain from 2000 to 2010, the now retired PMac was many things: healer, mentor, visionary and, more than any other U.S. captain, a real player’s coach. Not bad for a guy who was once primarily known for being the tagalong (and far more benign) junior member of the most prominent good cop/bad cop family tandem in sports. Tennis buffs first spotted Johnny Mac‘s kid brother in the Friends Box at tournaments looking just slightly horrified as his big bro unleashed yet another a volcanic eruption over some perceived injustice.
Yet, at first, some didn’t even make the big Mac connection. When Pat was playing a Futures tournament, he was asked if he had any brothers or sisters who play tennis. “Yes,” he responded, “my brother is No. 1 in the world.”
Of course, young Mac knew his place and admitted, “I’ll never argue with officials. Arguing is just not worth it. I couldn’t win with my name.” Officials soon realized that Pat was, as Jeff Tarango noted, “the lesser of two evils. He always seemed to get the sportsmanship award. People were happy he didn’t burn the place down.”
•••••
What went down in 2000 were the fortunes of America’s Davis Cup effort. It wasn’t merely that we hadn’t won in five years. It was more a kind of spiritual malaise. After all, many of the big guns in tennis were aboard our ship: Sampras, Agassi, Courier, Chang and Martin.
Boo-ya!
But — for all their great athleticism, high rankings and bulging trophy cases — we couldn’t get it together. There were numerous flashes of heroic play. But, ultimately, the (“this is all about me”) individualistic mind-set of modern tennis torpedoed any sense of a greater good. When tennis buffs pleaded, “Hey, playing for flag and nation is a noble opportunity worth sacrificing for,” too often stars muttered, “I’ve got other fish to fry.”
To make matters worse, the ’99 one-and-done captaincy of John McEnroe, by far the most successful player in the Davis Cup firmament, proved to be a not-so-pretty train-wreck that was more about feuds than family. Mac did convince Sampras and Agassi to play, but the superstars left injured and/or in a snit. The 2000 semifinal in Spain was a textbook case of how not to lead. The entire focus was whether the just-over-the hill John McEnroe would play doubles. (He didn’t). And the beloved Spainish icon Manuel Santana said, “McEnroe is a clown. We will win 5-0.”
They did.
With the Davis Cup program in a shambles, John resigned. Most figured that PMac’s entry as captain was a safe pick. PMac was the vanilla flavor of the McEnroe brand. His task would essentially be to serve as a caretaker who would simply clean up the mess and do some hefty damage control.
Wrong!
Yes, McEnroe Lite had none of the scene-stealing bravado and here-I-am charisma of his brother. All he could claim was his under-the-radar skills. He had uncanny tennis instincts, knew when to say no, what he wanted, what he could do and had the skill set to get it.
“I’ve always been the type of person who likes to focus on things I can impact and control,” PMac told IT. “When I took the job, it was, ‘Well, are you going to get Sampras and Agassi to play?’ I’d reply, ‘I’ll ask them. I’ll keep the communication open. But if they don’t want to play, why would you want them to play?’ I’ve always felt that you get guys who want to be there. Obviously, you need the horses. But I felt it was a waste of energy to try to convince someone to do something they don’t want to do.”
So Mac looked to the future, a new way, a youth movement — not that it was easy.
In one of his first ties in Slovakia, the young, spit-and-vinegar Roddick was walking tall. He had just won the Open. His then-coach Brad Gilbert told Mac, “He’s in a weird mood, man,” and the suddenly distant A-Rod told Pat, “Hey, captain, don’t talk to me.” PMac recalled, “All of a sudden Andy was ‘Mr. Cool.’ So I said, ‘Okay.’ He’s playing [Dominik] Hrbaty and he’s losing 6-3, 3-2. The crowd’s going crazy. I literally didn’t say one word to him. I’m thinking, ‘This kid is our player for many years to come. He’s going to have to learn a lesson. I may have to sacrifice this match so that he understands. I’m just here to try to help. I could see all the USTA people wondering, ‘What’s Patrick doing? He hasn’t said a word.’ So Andy gets down a break in the second, comes down, slumps over and says, ‘Alright, what do I do now?’ I said, ‘I can talk now?’ That was the last time anything like that ever happened.”
Pat quickly gained Andy’s confidence and Roddick, soon became the lynchpin of a new generation of players, a band of brothers. Speaking of brothers, McEnroe held off for two long years before picking the Bryan Bros. for two precious slots on the team until they proved themselves big time on the circuit. But once on the team, Mac realized how nervous they were. “I went to the Bryans room the night before their first match and said, ‘Listen, guys, I was lucky enough to play Davis Cup four times, but I knew every time if I lost I was out. They went through me and Richey Reneberg and Jared Palmer and Jonathan Stark and Brad Gilbert and Pat Galbraith. Everybody knew that if you lost, you were out.’ I waited so long to put the Bryans in because I wanted them to earn it. I wanted them to feel it was unequivocal. I told them,’You guys are our team. Go out there and do it tomorrow. But tomorrow’s about tomorrow. This doesn’t mean if you lose you’re never going to play again.’ I think that really helped them.”
Bob Bryan couldn’t agree more. “It was our first Davis Cup. We felt this was our one shot. We were nervous wrecks. He said, ‘Guys, you’re our team for many years.’ It was a great coaching move. It took a lot of pressure off. Pat was always very personable and knew how to handle everyone as an individual. For A-Rod, he would say a little less. James, he would say a little more. With us, he would sort of bull—t us with the ‘Rah, Rah thing: you’re going to war for the country, patriotic stuff. He would text us all the time. E-mails, always calling. He was a great friend to all the players.”
Mary Carillo concurred, saying, “PMac was more than a captain. He mentored those kids. He helped grow them up. The things he looked for and the things he stressed, the esprit de corps he developed, that’s his legacy. He got a collection of young kids and imbued them with this great sense of what Davis Cup was and they listened and believed. They happened to be a group of guys who really liked each other anyway. These kids wanted to do something special. And Andy was absolutely key because all the other guys looked up to him and if he was to be that committed they wanted to be a part of it. Davis Cup is a big commitment with a lot of stress and pressure. It got to the point where people wanted in. Instead of U.S. captains having to beg people to play, the Bryan brothers were saying, ‘I swear we can do it.'”
But just before dipping into the Davis Cup waters, the Bryans were so nervous, Bob Bryan recalled that “Mike actually cramped on match point with a full leg cramp. We tried to do the chest bump, but he couldn’t get off the ground. It was the last point of the match. Had we lost that point, they would have put Mike in a body bag. Then when we were going down the main street in Bratislava, Pat pulled up next to us and yelled, ‘Get a wheelbarrow!’ We said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You need a wheelbarrow for how big your balls are!’ We laughed about that for many years.”
But there were tears, too. After a heart-wrenching defeat in France, Roddick was weeping in the shower and said, “I let our team down.” But PMac poignantly assured him that that wasn’t the case. “Listen,” he said. “You went out there and gave it everything you had and that’s all we ask.” Another time, the team was behind and facing relegation from the world group in Belgium. A disconsolate Roddick said he couldn’t go on. But, McEnore said “look over at [Olivier] Rochus. He’s cramping. Just hold your serve. If you get behind a point or two on his serve, just tank and focus on holding your serve.” Roddick toughed it out and prevailed.
In 2005, PMac didn’t realize how slow the hard courts were in Carson, a mistake that helped the Croatians streak to victory. Critical coin flips never seemed to go our way, Spain emerged as a super power and we often struggled on Euro clay. Still, there was that immeasurable sense of camaraderie. Granted, this was far from our greatest generation of players. But it was our most joyous. Silly pranks, goofy rookie speeches, countless dinners: support and spirit, tweets and bleeps, such road warriors and merry pranksters — the more these tennis frat boys pulled down PMac’s pants, the higher their spirits rose.
Go figure.
Caked in clay in Moscow, surviving to fight another day in Belgium or stumbling in Spain — all for one, one for all; the ethos was both sweet and empowering. A Bryan brother played in 19 straight ties; Roddick, Blake and the Bryans were in the lineup 10 straight times, PMac posted the second most wins (17) of any Davis Cup coach and the journey culminated in one glorious ’07 Portland weekend when, led by Blake, the boys downed the Russians to win it all.
But PMac’s reign was not about numbers or even victories. Pride, sportsmanship, commitment, love of country – it was all there. “Players loved him,” noted Bob Bryan “He was a quiet leader and always said the right thing. He didn’t say too much. He always had the players’ back. If we were getting dicked around at a dinner that was going too long, he would put the hammer down and get us out of there. That’s why he had the commitment of the top guys.”
“With other coaches,” noted ESPN commentator Cliff Drysdale, “it was sometimes about themselves and what Davis Cup could do for them. But Patrick changed the entire dynamic. It was never about him. He just changed the culture of the team.” When playing Davis Cup became part of the culture, everyone wanted to play. They wanted to be part of Patrick’s leadership. There were no more prima donnas. Those days were over.”
Let us only hope that Patrick McEnroe’s quietly crafted legacy — brotherhood and love, laughter and triumph — is far from over.
