WHEN GREG GOT TO FINAL OF SURREAL US OPEN
20 years ago, adopted Brit Rusedski had an incredible run at a tournament overshadowed by Diana’s death
You knew that it was not going to be an ordinary second week of the uS open from the moment the hotel room phone rang at 11pm on the tournament’s middle Saturday night.
‘You had better switch the TV on, something big is happening at home,’ said a colleague.
The vast majority of people in the uK slept through the initial coverage of Princess Diana’s death 20 years ago, this being well before the advent of sophisticated mobile phones and social media.
But in New York the tragedy unfolded live not long after primetime, and around 20 minutes after switching on it was solemnly intoned that the icon of her age had died in a car crash.
There have been shocks galore at Flushing Meadows this past fortnight, but they could not match the surreal feel experienced by those reporting events from a British perspective in 1997.
While sport in the uK was put on hold during the mass outpouring of grief, it just happened to be the week Greg Rusedski made an unlikely run to the uS open final.
Even without such a backdrop, the achievement of the adopted Brit would have been exceptional, for his progress was as unexpected as that of Kevin Anderson, who was last night facing Rafael Nadal for the title.
This was a period before the upsurge in British sport we now take for granted.
The previous year there had been the dismal showing at the Atlanta olympics; the England cricket team were so often a punchbag; the Premier League was yet to become a global phenomenon; winning the 2003 Rugby World Cup was still a pipedream.
And British tennis was a longstanding joke. We just did not have contenders for the big events, although two individuals — in the shape of Rusedski and Tim Henman — had arrived on the scene and suggested an upturn in fortunes.
They were an odd couple, who two months earlier had ghosted into the Wimbledon quarter-finals. Henman was the quintessential Englishman while Rusedski had switched from Canada, by virtue of having a Dewsbury-born mother and a long- term girlfriend for whom he had moved across the Atlantic and taken up his uK citizenship.
Rusedski was still something of the nervous outsider and although unseeded for that uS open, was definitely an improver.
The coming week was to be a test of his diplomacy and PR skills, not to mention the examination of skills and stamina that such a huge event brings with it.
An important supporting actor was to be his coach Brian Teacher, a former world No 10 and your archetypal laidback Californian considered to have slightly hippy tendencies. A devotee of yoga and fond of wearing flipflops or sandals, he had done a remarkable job of turning Rusedski’s ugly duckling of a backhand into something of a weapon.
From merely poking the ball back on that flank, Rusedski was now able to hit over it with top spin, shoring up a key part of his game to add to his blockbuster, left-handed serve that was the prime weapon.
By the time he had surprisingly reached the quarter-final without dropping a set, the awful news of Diana was starting to sink in.
The night after her death a few of us walked down a few blocks to the British consulate, which had become a shrine.
ONE recalls a New York TV producer walking all over the makeshift mass of pictures and flowers and talking loudly, to be met with a sharp rebuke in a British accent: ‘This is a memorial, not a bloody film set.’ The following day a couple of American colleagues brought flowers to the row of working British journalists.
In his quarter- final on the Wednesday, played on a horribly windy and overcast afternoon, Rusedski produced the grittiest performance of his career to take down the recently- crowned Wimbledon champion Richard Krajicek in three tight sets.
Back then, the men’s semis and finals were played back to back on
the second Saturday and Sunday, a ludicrous arrangement happily now scrapped. It meant that Rusedskiski would be taking on theth high-flyinghi h fl i Swede, Jonas Bjorkman, on the day of Diana’s funeral. How would Greg, aware he needed to burnish his credentials as a true Brit, be marking the occasion, we asked.
He replied that he would be getting up at 6am to watch the funeral live. ‘I think I will probably watch the funeral just out of respect,’ he said. ‘It’s a sad occasion. She was a great humanitarian who did such great things for the world.’
Teacher did not think this was a great idea. ‘I would not advise that at all,’ he said in his dreamy Californian accent when he was tracked down. ‘The thing I’m concerned about is the emotions. I don’t want him to be feeling down going out on court. I don’t think it would be good for him to have the TV on for hours in the morning.
‘I will have a talk with him and say: “What is going to be served by you focusing on this?”’
This disagreement between coach and player made for a lively build-up to the semi, which started well. Rusedski took the first set 6-1 but then lost the next two 6-3 and was down in the fourth before he pounced on the Swede getting nervous. This was, after all, a huge chance for the remaining four players, as Pete Sampras had been surprisingly ousted in the fourth round by Czech Petr Korda.
In another magnificent display of resolve,l th the bi big-servingi l left-handerfth d came back to win 7-5 in the deciding set. The problem was that barely 24 hours later he had to play Australian Pat Rafter, who had beaten Michael Chang in straight sets in his semi-final.
The cast list is a reminder of a weaker era — at least at the very top — when there were no Federers, Nadals, Djokovics or Murrays.
The day after Diana was buried, with even a success- starved British public preoccupied with weightier matters, Rusedski stepped out to face the swashbuckling Australian.
It was one match too many and although the British No 1 fought back to take the third set, he was the wearier of the two and went down 6-3, 6-2, 4-6, 7-5. Notably, it was still enough to win him the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award for 1997.
The postscript was that, despite the excellent job he had done, Teacher was sacked a month later by Rusedksi, who was not to reach a Grand Slam final again.
It should be noted that there were those at the time who accused Rusedski of wrapping himself in the union flag for convenience and commercial gain and questioned his commitment.
So let it be recorded that he has lived in the uK ever since and remained involved in the British game as a coach and commentator.