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Seldom does a sport make captains as beholden to their players as tennis. With Davis Cup and Fed Cup teams a viable proposition with just two players — sometimes even just one — the vast majority of captains are in place by the grace of the country’s leading players, and it’s a brave, or foolhardy, national association that picks a captain that the top-ranked stars aren’t happy with.
But with Russia it’s a different story. The somewhat corpulent figure sitting on the bench when Russia’s men or women play as a nation may not look the epitome of a sportsman, but he is the man who runs Russian tennis. And you can forget about the idea of players playing for their country when it suits them — if he calls, his players run.
Shamil Tarpischev is a unique character in world tennis, and one unlikely ever to be seen again. He is a survivor of political and sporting quarrels that characterized the last quarter of the 20th century, and he has built up a respect among Russia’s players that gives him a status most other captains can only dream of.
When Russia’s women beat the U.S. in Stowe, Vt., in July’s Fed Cup semi, it was the 59-year-old’s 100th tie on the bench. (He nearly missed the tie after rumors of a link to the Russian mafia slowed his visa application.) He has since taken his Fed Cup tally to 38 with Russia’s third title last month, and the Davis Cup final will be his 65th Davis Cup tie. No other captain will ever get close to that figure. In addition, he is the president of the Russian tennis association, and in case he gets bored, he’s also a member of the International Olympic Committee.
He can put his longevity down to having become captain at 25, at a time when the Soviet Union’s view of the world conflicted with the burgeoning Open Era of global tennis.
A tennis player from the age of eight, having taken up the sport after injuring his ankle playing soccer, he became proficient but not quite good enough to earn the government’s permission to travel abroad. Yet the esteem in which the country’s top players held him earned him a call-up to captain the Soviet Davis Cup team that year.
It was a position he held until ‘91, when political events moved him to the Kremlin. That was the year Boris Yeltsin maneuvered Mikhail Gorbachev out of power, and oversaw the dissolution of the once-mighty Soviet Union. Shortly before, Yeltsin had tried tennis, got smitten by it, and threw all his out-of-office energies into it. When he invited Tarpischev to become a member of his government of the new “de-Sovietized” Russian Federation — and give the president some coaching — the link between tennis and politics was further strengthened.
Recalling that time, Tarpischev told the International Herald Tribune, “The ‘middle level’ of tennis wasn’t bad, but when Yeltsin came out in a tennis outfit on court, at that moment the whole thing took a leap. The mass media, TV, everything came in, and the good thing was that it came at a time when we had already prepared the ground.”
The emergence of Yevgeny Kafelnikov and the twilight blossoming of Andrei Chesnokov’s career saw Russia to two Davis Cup finals in the mid-’90s when Tarpischev was still in the Kremlin, but in ‘97 he returned to his old job as Davis Cup captain, supplemented by the additional duties of Fed Cup captain. The story goes that Anna Kournikova wouldn’t play Fed Cup unless Tarpischev was the captain.
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Since then he has not only cemented his reputation as the great survivor, but has become one of the wiliest captains in the Davis Cup’s 107-year history. He, more than anyone, has maximized the potential of rotating his four players, and was one of the first to recognize the value of keeping a quality singles man fresh for the third day of ties. After holding Marat Safin back for a devastating live fifth rubber against France’s Paul-Henri Mathieu in April’s quarterfinal, Tarpischev was asked about his tactical astuteness. “I ought to have learned a bit about tactics after so many ties,” he replied modestly.
That modesty is a key to his enduring survival. He has learned to use his influence away from the glare of publicity and to remain ever polite and courteous in the public gaze. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be tough.
An example of his ruthlessness came at last year’s Davis Cup semi against the U.S. in Moscow. Nikolay Davydenko had gone from the semis of the U.S. Open to take a handsome paycheck in Beijing. This did not amuse Tarpischev, who had chosen clay not just to thwart Andy Roddick and James Blake, but because Davydenko was so good on it. Davydenko played no part in the weekend, despite being one of the four nominated players, and Dmitry Tursunov was given Davydenko’s fourth rubber slot, seizing his moment to shine by memorably beating Andy Roddick 17-15 to seal the tie for Russia.
To this day, Tarpischev says Davydenko was struggling to overcome an illness and there was no inherent punishment in his choice of players, but that only serves to emphasize that his influence is wielded behind the scenes. Davydenko played in Beijing this year, too, but with Tarpischev’s approval, and he conveniently lost in the second round.
By picking two singles players and a specialist doubles team, Tarpischev’s opposite number for the Davis Cup final, Patrick McEnroe, has no selection problems to resolve. But he will be trying to second-guess the canny Tarpischev as much as possible, and that isn’t easy against a man of such pedigree.
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