Promotion will do for now

Tennis highs rarely come more fizzing than the one in October 1983. The Royal Dublin Society (RDS) was carpeted for Davis Cup tennis, the pavilion set up for the droves that flocked to see Irish tennis players Matt Doyle, Sean Sorensen and Peter Minnis face John McEnroe, the man with the paint-stripping language and the velvet touch. Billed as a spectacle as much as a match, it was the Irish terriers up against the American eagles. The outcome was never an issue.

Since he was a teenager, the New York-born world number one had vandalised a considerable number of sensibilities, many of which it had taken Wimbledon most of the century to build. Between those bouts, McEnroe had also won four US Opens and three Wimbledons. His volatility, as much as his greatness, was the beacon.

While he could scorch the ears of line judges, screaming about their "f***ing incompetence," he could also in the same muddled beat fall into an obsequious sermon on the merits of Davis Cup comp etition. "I'd go anywhere anytime to play Davis Cup for America," he said recently. A contradiction perhaps, but the former champion was always a giant step from the middle-of-the road and equally distant from a few of the current batch of celebrity players who can't find time from their image-building schedules to play for their country. Jimmy Conners, and now Pete Sampras, have proven to be reluctant Davis Cup patriots.

What attracted the left-hander to the competition was the lure of team participation and, unashamedly, the stars and stripes. But starved of the jock-strap routines associated with team games, the discreet pressures of playing for others as much as oneself, and a certain degree of boredom with the tour and it's gigantic cash prizes, the Davis Cup has normally stroked the senses of the great players.

That the Irish team were handed the USA in Dublin in Division One of the World Group of the competition was the prettiest of draws. McEnroe would have had the turnstiles clicking on his own, but with his regular doubles partner Peter Fleming, Eliott Teltscher and the American entourage in tow, Irish tennis had the public purring. "It was definitely the biggest match in Ireland's Davis Cup programme, for sure," says Sean Sorensen. "We were really excited to have a home match against the US. It was seen as a big event, but there was also the fear - you'd want to play reasonably."

"I'd known Teltscher from the US in college. Fleming and McEnroe I wouldn't have known personally. I'd played (Bjorn) Borg in Davis Cup a few years before -a different type of game on a different surface, and I'd played Lendl in doubles, but a lefthander in a serve-volley match was different again. We were underdogs by far," says Sorensen.

"What I noticed about McEnroe was how quick he was, how good his anticipation was and how early he took the ball. That set him apart from me and most of the other players in the world."

Doyle, ranked at around 60 in the world at the time, was also under no illusion that it was McEnroe who set the tie alight. At that stage the Californian-born Doyle was at the height of his career, having reached the final 16 in the US Open the previous year, 1982.

"He (McEnroe) was the biggest draw in tennis and perhaps still is. Simple. McEnroe was probably even bigger than the US team in terms of what people wanted to see. He was by far the best player in the world at the time and with Fleming he was also the best doubles player," says Doyle.

"I don't think anyone could have seen us winning the match. We put down a fast surface in the RDS and thought, hopefully, that one of us could beat their number two guy."

The year before Ireland had won four matches, the final one against Switzerland in Fitzwilliam, to qualify to meet Italy in Regio Calabria. Narrowly losing to the Italians 3-2 on slow clay gave them the prize draw of the US.

"I think now the chances of Ireland getting to the World Group is very, very remote," says Doyle. "Britain are in it this time for the first time (since 1992) and they've top players like Henman and Rudedski. I'd say you'd need one guy in the top 10 and another in the top 50 to be able to do it. Back then there was a different qualifying method to the one that operates now."

Over 6,000 people arrived at the RDS to watch the match, which stood at 1-1 going into Saturday. Doyle, having beaten Teltscher in straight sets 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 on the Friday evening, had kept the contest burning. It had taken him one hour, 53 minutes to crush the world number 15 in what was described as a demonstration of powerful serving and a commanding presence at the net.

McEnroe, who had won his second Wimbledon title that summer, was more settled than Teltscher. In his first match against Sorensen, he also took a straight set win 3-6, 2-6, 2-6. "It's nice to get receptions like this away from home," said the American warming to an upbeat Irish crowd before quipping "but then I tend to get good receptions at the start - it is only later that the goodwill tends to erode."

The weekend's play was typically more fraught and McEnroe's words were soon to haunt the officials. Limerick-born Michael Hickey, Ireland's non-playing captain and also an Irish Davis Cup player between 1962-78, found himself sucked into a verbal confrontation with umpire David Mercer after the American's petulance, which had been carefully bottled for the first two days, finally erupted on the Sunday.

"I felt quite honestly John McEnroe set out to intimidate the linesmen, questioning decisions without justification," said Hickey at the time. "Watching his behaviour out there, it is easy to see how he gets the benefit of the doubt. Frankly I thought the referee might have been stricter." McEnore's response was both quick and withering. "I don't have to depend on bad line calls to beat Matt Doyle," he said. While Doyle might have agreed, so would just about every player in the world had they faced the same put-down. No matter, McEnroe, who went on to win a record 59 matches in the Davis Cup for the US over 12 years, had clearly come close to exhausting the deep pool of goodwill in the Simmonscourt pavilion.

That Ireland slipped back into Division Two of the competition and into what was then called the zonal area, before then being cut loose to drift away from the main theatre of the competition is, with hindsight, good reason to buy into the nostalgia of the '83 event.