first serve: august 2004

By Bill Simons

It was just one comic routine at one tournament, a hilarious, ongoing schtick that had fans in stitches worldwide.

En route to winning the ‘01 Wimbledon title, Goran Ivanisevic offered up a self-deprecating , delightfully revealing monologue that introduced us to the Three Gorans. It was a kind of “don’t get no respect” soliloquy worthy of Rodney Dangerfield that proved to be a seamless parody of dusty psychoanalytical cliches and 12 years of on-court misadventures.

Maybe you remember the Three Gorans.

Goran I was the Good Goran, the generous, charismatic, deeply religious star we loved, the charitable, blue-sky guy who traveled with a priest and won 22 titles.

Goran II was the rebel, the Mad Goran, who was racked with demons and prone to racket-tossing tantrums and chronic, ill-timed self-destruction.

Finally, there was the Emergency, or 911, Goran, whose task was to step in and sort out all the psychic chaos; the Goran who famously intervened when the Croat was about to implode and blow his chance to finally win Wimbledon, by telling the two other Gorans to get a grip. “Okay, now you have to calm down,” insisted Emergency Goran. “This is your last chance. You have to cool it. You can’t afford to be crazy in the Wimbledon final.”

Of course, tennis has had its share of funnymen. Ilie Nastase, Jimmy Connors, Yannick Noah, Pancho Segura and Whitney Reed could all get stadiums rolling in waves of laughter. But these days, among our major players, Goran is the funniest.

In an often-grim world where “just the facts” athletes (from Borg and Chrissie to Lendl and Sampras) not only play the game with a certain joyless focus, but make a (“I ain’t gonna show my opponents where I’m at”) virtue of their expressionless tunnel vision, Goran was a man apart.

Refreshing, unpredictable and prone to meltdowns; there was little — from the English children’s show Teletubbies to the elderly — that wasn’t grist for his syntax-be-damned mill. At the Indian Wells tournament, he said, no, he didn’t like to go to Palm Springs restaurants because everyone there looks so old, as if they are about to die.

Reflecting on a recent mishap when he stepped on a shell in Miami, he joked, “The beach is 10 kilometers long, there was one shell on the beach and only one person can find it and step on it — me. I can injure myself getting out of bed.”

Goran has long been a Croatian national treasure. His most poignant moment prior to winning Wimbledon was carrying the Croatian flag at the ‘88 and ‘92 Olympics and just after his final Wimbledon match, he donned Croatia’s more-than-cool soccer jersey. He was an inspiration to the tiny, poor, war-torn (“how come they’re so athletic?”) nation. When Goran would play a big match, “whole towns,” according to countryman Mario Ancic, “would go silent. Nobody doing anything. Just watch.” Clearly, he was the reason three Croatians got well into the second week at Wimbledon, including Ancic, who Goran advised (when the kid was just 12), to “just keep breaking rackets.”

art seitz
In an often grim world, where “just the facts” athletes play the game with a certain joyless focus, Goran was a man apart.

When throngs in Croatia came out to celebrate Goran’s cathartic ‘01 Wimbledon victory, he disrobed and then contended, “I’m the only guy who do a striptease in front of 200,000 people — Brazil is f------ s--- compared to this.” A giant free-spirit, “He just stayed a normal guy,” said Ancic, “even though he won so many titles.”

In Croatia, Ivanisevic deadpanned, “They just say, that’s Goran, who cares?” As for his solitary place on the circuit, he shrugged his shoulders, “If I wanted to speak Croatian, I had to talk to myself.”

One official reviewed tapes of Goran swearing in Croatian and fined him $9,000, but then conceded that Ivanisevic was a poet of profanity. Amidst the battle, the man who once defaulted from a tournament because he smashed all his rackets in anger, would  inevitably become convinced of his hapless stupidity and miserable, ill-fated destiny. No one could verbalize angst and self-loathing with the theatrical charm and “we’ve all been there” sense of exasperation as could the 6-foot-4  Peter Pan of a boy who never grew up.

Beyond superstitious, Goran always uses the same urinal at Wimbledon. Never mind if it’s the only one being used — he just waits in line behind some bemused guy. Plus, each day at Wimbledon he would  park in the same spot under the same tree in the parking lot. So, one day he drove into the lot, which was completely empty except for one car, which, wouldn’t you know, was parked in Goran’s beloved spot. So, he and the young Mario Ancic lift the car and put it in a different spot. And this is just hours before he goes out and wins Wimbledon.

And, of course, during his run this year to Wimbledon’s third round, Goran couldn’t help being Goran. So, after claiming he was just “an old engine who needs a little oil, then I keep running,” he unleashed his usual repertoire of antics: hitting balls between his legs, becoming shirtless faster than you can say Brandi Chastain, mumbling crazed “you’re such an idiot” Croatian rants or looking above to thank or plead with his oh-so-patient Lord.

Then there was his “Stich in time” routine. When his second-round match, which he was losing badly, was delayed due to rain, German Michael Stich approached him and said, “Listen, I’m commentating your match, you’ve got to do something!” Goran replied, “Sorry man, I didn’t know. Now I’m going to do something. After  that, I started to play much better. That’s why I won.”

After his last match, a drubbing by Lleyton Hewitt, a reporter noted that when “a girl called out ‘Goran, I love you,’ you won a point.” Goran then explained that when another girl said she loved me “I win another point. Then nobody says they love me and I lost two points.”

Most important, at Wimbledon Goran corrected the rumor [spread by Inside Tennis] that Emergency Goran was deeply despondent because he had so little to do recently. “No,” Goran assured us, “I was never depressed in my life. 911 Goran is like a guru, like a healer. He goes in there in case the two other Gorans [the Good and the Bad] get in a fight. It’s like a ref in the box. So both have to stop and go to their corners and relax. After a minute, they come back and they’re okay.”

Of course, Ivanisevic was not merely Rodney Dangerfield in shorts. He did have that serve. Sure, Roscoe Tanner had the first great left-handed serve of the Open era, and according to Brad Gilbert, Greg Rusedski’s lefty serve had the most variety, Wayne Arthurs’ was in itself the best and McEnroe’s was by far the most effective. Still, Ivanisevic had the heaviest. He could win Wimbledon games in just 47 seconds and his heat-seeking missiles (along with Becker‘s and Sampras’) transformed Wimbledon and much of tennis into a (“where have all the rallies gone?”) serving contest.

In fact, critics dismissed him as a one-shot wonder, plus he was long said to be “the best player never to’ve won a major.” Then on People’s Monday — the most inspired day in tennis history — when due to rain, Wimbledon let the masses into Centre Court for a raucous final, the man who’d lost three Wimby finals downed the wildly popular Patrick Rafter 9-7 in the fifth to become the lowest-ranked player ever to win the title. It was an epiphany. The long-suffering clown whose job supposedly was merely to make us chuckle was reduced to an ecstatic, teary delirium. No wonder he promptly informed us, “Now I don’t even care if I win another match in my career.”

True, historians will note some curious shortcomings in the career of the guy who pocketed $20 million in on-court earnings. Like Agassi and Connors, he never led his nation to a Davis Cup title. None of his titles were won in America [Editor’s Note: How many pros have won tournaments in Croatia?] Plus, he’s leaving with just one victory shy of 600.

Still, he could joke about his greatest shortfall. Admitting that never becoming No. 1 was the only thing he regretted, he nonetheless noted that “to be No. 2 behind Sampras, that’s biggest honor because he is the best player in history. And that year [‘94] he won three Grand Slams, so I didn’t have any chance — only if I shoot him.”

But what our favorite multiple-personality guy (from that deliciously appropriate city of Split) did do was to generously bathe us in that far-too-rare commodity — sweet, hilarious, innocent laughter.

So we salute the Good Goran. We send heartfelt condolences to the Bad Goran. And most of all, we honor one of the most endearing figures in tennis history — that flawed but fabulous foil we love so much, the one and only Emergency, 911 Goran. So, good friend, we’ll miss you — all three of you.

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