75 years of independence day iconic moments indian sport India vs Sweden 1987 Davis cup final
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December 18-20, 1987: Swedes paint India white in the Davis Cup final
In any case, 1987 was an extraordinary year in world tennis. Not least from an Indian point of view.
It may not escape the attention of too many tennis fans during the same time last year that we celebrated India’s success in holding on to its place in the World Group of Davis Cup. At the time, even those who were particularly keen on fantasizing would not have foreseen India’s fairytale race in the Davis Cup last season.
“We have no task to play in the World Group final, would you not say?” Vijay Amritraj said with a big smile and a sweeping theatrical gesture after Ramesh Krishnan beat Wally Masur in the semi-final to take a place for India in the final. If you had asked a computer to select the likely finalists for ’87 at the time the draw was made, the presiding deity of the 20th century would really have ignored India. As Vijay said, given the rankings of the two Indian singles players, a realistic ambition would have been for India to try to retain their world group place.
But 87 was a year when the real seemed unreal, the fact bordered on fiction and the Indian stars, Vijay and Ramesh became dream traders and rejected their assigned roles as companion professionals.
A hiding place for nothing
Normally, this time of year, the relaxed Nordic coastal city of Gothenburg, a rather strange compromise between Victorian England and 80s America, is dressed in white. The snow is as punctual as Christmas and New Year in this part of the world, a region a little south of the Arctic Circle and among the coldest areas in the world. But this year, in mid-December, the weather itself was only a couple of degrees below zero for the most part and therefore it was considered “warm”.
But the Swedish tennis players compensated for the absence of snow. At Scandinavium indoor stadium, in the Davis Cup final, the Swedes came with a whitewash, which given the right surface and home advantage has become a habit with them.
Admittedly, the Indians are used to neither. A Whitewash from the Davis Cup has been as foreign to them as snow in recent years, at least ever since the world group format was introduced. Again, perhaps the fact that India won at least a single rubber in each of their Davis Cup matches in the 80’s is a bigger surprise than the fact that it did not on the slow, red clay court here.
From the time that Sweden and India went to the final in this year’s competition, it has been known to everyone who knows his tennis that the odds on a Swedish sweep were quite unattractive. The last time, already in 1985, the teams met in Bangalore and it was now Sweden’s turn to receive India. It was clear enough, but what had come as a bit of a surprise was that Sweden gave India the same status as the United States. In 1984, until the last match, the Swedes for the first time planted a specially made pot here to counteract the genius of John McEnroe and Jimmy Connor. No one could have accused them of overreacting then.
But to think of something like that to beat a team that only has one player among the top 200? Why not just play indoors in Stockholm on a rug? Why bother preparing a slow, red gravel course to play India? Well, the Swedes believe in closing all the holes, right? They really are methodical people. They do not believe in the joy of casual.
And then, if it was hardly the biggest of matches, the Davis Cup final was basically a tribute to the Swedes’ mastery of tennis science. This country has an enviable line-up, such as Mats Wilander, Anders Jarryd, Stefan Edberg and Joakim Nyström. The only man who was not a running band prototype, Stefan Edberg, could not play in the final as he injured his right ankle during training just before the match.
Despite Edberg’s injury, the Swedish non-playing captain Hans Olsson, a softly friendly man who was a teacher at a school in Malmö before taking up one of the most notable jobs in the game today, chose not to take advantage of the opportunity to make a change in the four-member team for the final. .
Just lucky to be in the world group, everyone thought. That Vijay and Ramesh took India to the Davis Cup final had nothing to do with luck. Sweat, stomach and courage, then.
Good record
He really had no reason to. For both Anders Jarryd and Joakim Nyström were in good shape. Jarryd had a record of 12-3 in Davis Cup singles even though he had never played a single in a final before. And the 26-year-old university graduate did no harm to the good record when he added two important victories without losing a set. Jarryd kept his painting clean against the Indians: so far he has not lost a match against either Ramesh Krishnan or Vijay Amritaj.
But the more impressive winner in singles matches was the man who has lost once each against Vijay and Ramesh; Mats Wilander. There was no way Vijay or Ramesh could have even won a set against Wilander, given that the two-time winner of the French Open played his usual, steady tennis. And Wilander really did just that in the final. Before the match, once it was known that Jarryd was the second single player, the only hope for the Indians was to try to attack Jarryd and see what damage they could do. But, as it turned out.
Jarryd does not go to Wilander’s class and he does not have Ramesh or Vijay’s gifts when it comes to percussion. But he is a man who has taken bread and butter tennis to his apotheosis. He served well and intelligently, he came in behind the right shots and he kept the ball in play all the time which forced the Indians to make mistakes in the assessment or placement.
In fact, in both of his matches, and especially the first day against Vijay, it was Jarryd who played the most offensive tennis seen in the competition. He was unafraid to follow the good deep shot to the net and he did some talking volley as well.
Davis Cup Final 1987
Match 1
Mats Wilander beat Ramesh Krishnan (6-4, 6-1, 6-3)
Match 2
Anders Jarryd beat Vijay Amritraj (6-3, 6-3, 6-1)
Match 3
Joakim Nyström / Mats Wilander beat Anand Amritraj / Vijay Amritraj (6-2, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2)
Match 4
Anders Jarryd beat Ramesh Krishnan (6-4, 6-3)
Match 5
Mats Wilander beat Vijay Amritraj (6-2, 6-0)
The trick failed
Just a few months ago, in Cincinnati in the USA, Vijay had played a close match against Jarryd, who took the bouncy Swede to a decisive lead and led 5-4. But Jarryd had then bounced back to win the match but it was on a faster surface and on the slow gravel track Vijay had no hope of stretching the younger, more alert man.
Vijay tried everything he could. He tried drop shots. But instead of dying directly over the net, as they would on a green, the balls set up as moving targets waiting to be hit. Maybe a little more slice, or under-spin, on the drip shots would have helped. And when Vijay tried to lobby, Jarryd moved back to crush it for a winner.
The 6-3, 6-3, 6-1 victory for Jarryd came in an hour and 42 minutes and it was just over 12 minutes better in time than Wilander’s clinical demolition of Ramesh Krishnan in the first match.
All Wilander did was a clay-court tennis lesson. Unscathed, patient as only he can be, he worked his way into the match from the baseline. He went quietly to work dismantling the Indian defense. He hit some fantastic passes, especially the double-handed variant on the backhand, something that has always been his patent, as much as it was Björn Borgs. The Swede broke Ramesh in the very first match and then rode comfortably through to take the set. In the sixth game, Ramesh was a bit unlucky to be hit by two bad line calls, but the game was nowhere so close that it warranted greater scrutiny of those two points.
Of course, Ramesh knew he did not have the technical or physical equipment to try to beat Wilander from the baseline and no one can blame him for, but without success, trying to hit the net as often as he did. But the Indian barely won a few points from the net when Wilander broke through the second set. Ramesh played his best tennis in the third. He even broke Wilander’s serve once but not even that was enough and Wilander stormed back to find the decisive break to take the set and the match. The Swede won 6-4, 6-1, 6-3 in one hour and 54 minutes.
Little pride
Wilander and Nyström, friends since they were 10 or 11 and roommates on the circuit until very recently, did their job to perfection against Anand and Vijay Amritraj. Still, this was the match where India did better than ever in this final. It actually won a set. Another day, another time, the Amritraj brothers might have beaten these Swedes, but one man is now 35 and another is 34.
Regardless, Amritrajs made sure they did not go down without the appearance of a fight. After winning the first set, the Swedes, especially Wilander, relaxed a bit and both Vijay and Anand returned services brilliantly and volleyed purposefully to break Wilander and Nyström once in the second set. Although Vijay himself lost the serve once, the set was India’s. But the brothers could not maintain that kind of excellence and the Swedes swept down the Indians in the third set and came back after a short break to complete the job without much hassle and won 6-2, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2.
The end of the dream
Thus ended the dream for Vijay and his men. “It was such a wonderful dream,” said the Indian captain. “The damn Swedes had to wake us up,” he said, grinning at Hans Olsson.
But Vijay said he now had a feeling he had achieved something in his Davis Cup career even though India did not win the final. “I think if I were to retire today there would be only one regret: that I was not allowed to play in a Wimbledon final,” he said.
The idea of retirement has actually been in Vijay’s mind for a while now. And the man has a great sense of humor. The big stage he was on in Gothenburg, with the world’s attention on this city, was a huge temptation for the Indian captain to resign in the final. But for various reasons, Vijay postponed that decision.
On the third day, Jarryd Ramesh beat 6-4, 6-3 in a close match while Wilander played a worn Vijay Amritraj 6-2, 6-0 in the last match and made it 5-0 for Sweden. The last time a team lost 5-0 in a Davis Cup final was in 1979 when the United States beat Italy in San Francisco without losing a single set. India did a little better than Italy then. It won a set.
Later, after a gripping closing ceremony where the Davis Cup was awarded to Sweden for the fourth time in 13 years (they previously won 1975, 1984 and 1985), everyone, including the president of the International Tennis Federation Philippe Chatrier, said it was “one of the best matches I have seen, not because of the proximity of the matches, which of course they were not, but because of the wonderfully friendly spirit in which the match was played. “
Gothenburg saw a set of bad losers in 1984 when Connors and McEnroe were here but now they had the privilege of seeing the nicest losers in the game.
Choose your friend: You want a whining McEnroe or a smiling Vijay. And rest assured: None of them were good enough to carry Dwight Davis’ silver bowl out of this frozen land.
Maybe the bowl will remain in the Swedish freezer for a long, long time to come.
This article by the late Nirmal Shekar was first published in The Sportstar issue dated January 2, 1988