Cold fish in need of mustard

SIMON BARNES,
London Times TUE 03 SEP 1991

COMPARING the US Open tennis to Wimbledon is rather like comparing baseball to cricket. It is an intriguing but ultimately barren occupation: in the end they have nothing in common at all. They are completely different games. This is the tournament where Connors and McEnroe stand as giants. They are New York's idea of what a tennis player should be: spitting, fighting, brawling, heart-on-sleeve performers. When pricked, they bleed. When upset they scream. When glad they punch the air. They share everything with the crowd: in match after match, you see them emotionally stark-naked in front of you. On Sunday night, I watched a match of great beauty, and great intensity. It was at times as intense as anything Connors and McEnroe can come up with. But it is the wrong kind of intensity for New York. Stefan Edberg beat Michael Chang 7-6, 7-5, 6-3. It was the battle of inscrutables.

The night matches at the US Open are wonderful. The Stadium Court is one of the ugliest buildings in sport, but it is charged with atmosphere. And that counts double at night. But it is a place for the stronger emotions: or the most scrutable players. It is a theatre where Titus Andronicus goes better than Measure for Measure. The match between Chang and Edberg was enjoyed by the New York crowd, but not treasured. The trouble is that both the players are cold fish. Chang even has a collection of tropical fish. His press-box nickname is ``Guppy''. In New York, they prefer something with a bit more mustard on it. Edberg is such an odd spectacle in this environment. He wears his bewildered Buster Keaton look even in triumph. He would look out of place in Stockholm, or even Fulham, were he lives. In New York, he is far more a fish out of water than the guppy.

He is a great contradiction here. At Wimbledon he is adored, because he is so handsome. But Flushing Meadow is short on schoolgirls, long on people looking for a snarling, brawling tennis match. Edberg baffles them, as they baffle him. He looks an innocent victim in New York: you constantly expect some atavistic New York spirit to carry him off. In King Kong, he would be Fay Wray. All the same, Edberg, like Chang, has made a career out of looking deceptive. Both adopt guppy's clothing: both are sharks underneath. At present, Chang is a basking shark who may, or may not, fulfil his potential of terrorising neighbourhoods. Edberg looks like a guppy, but in his heart, he is Jaws. Chang is a fascinating player to watch. He is a cunning, thoughtful counter-puncher with whiplash reactions. At one point against Edberg, he returned a full-blooded Edberg smash on the half-volley. He is sneaky. Big men can be bluff, open-hearted good chaps. Little guys must be nasty. Chang is always scheming to stick a finger in his opponent's eye.

And every time he falls over he gets back up again. Unless your kill-shot is inch-perfect, it will not kill: the little schemer has got it back again. Chang's game is revealed by his extraordinary figures, which come courtesy of the Great American Killer Stats Machine: in 12 five-set matches he has played professionally he has won ten.

Chang managed two things you would have thought impossible: he made Edberg look clumsy, and he made Edberg look like a bully. Even, at times, a rather ineffectual one. But Edberg's power won the day. After the first two sets had taken two hours and six minutes, he went into a feeding frenzy and gobbled Chang up in half an hour. Jaws swims boldly onward, smiling apologetically as he does so.