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| 27 Nov 2009 - Chris Bowers | |
| Forty years of evolution - and a ball boy started it! |
Spain will be the favourite to win this year’s Davis Cup by BNP Paribas, a triumph that would give the south-west European nation its fourth title in 10 years.
But Spain’s ascent to the top in world tennis – both individually and in team tennis – has been a fairly recent phenomenon.
In fact, 40 years ago, when Spain was still under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, it was a game only for the affluent classes. Until a ball boy came and caused a revolution that the dictator heartily approved of.
It wasn’t just a social thing, though Spain’s tennis community had its fair share of snobbishness. Public courts in Spain in the 1950s and 60s were few and far between, so the only people who played the sport were members of the elite country clubs.
The major event of the Spanish tennis year was played at the Real Club de Barcelona, with the winner claiming the Trofeo Conde de Godo. A royal club with a trophy named after a count – that just about summed it up.
The club, founded in 1899 and situated on what used to be the outskirts of Barcelona, still stages an ATP tournament, and the count’s name is still on the trophy, but nothing else remotely resembles those languid days in the sun when you tipped the locker room attendant and paid for your towel.
In Barcelona, in particular, tennis is an industry, and people heading from the airport to the city centre see turn-offs for year-round training camps run by such former stars as Emilio Sanchez and Sergio Casal, Andres Gimeno and the Bruguera family.
Although natural social evolution would have brought down the class barriers in time, it is undeniable that the fuse that started the change came from a ball boy who was the son of a country club servant.
Santana makes breakthrough
Manuel Santana’s father was head groundsman at a club. He first picked up a racket because it was there. Not a beautiful racket but an old, dilapidated one that had been discarded by one of the members.
The courts were there, too, but the only time the son of the groundsman could use them was at unpopular hours of the day for tennis, such as the heat of siesta time. But that didn’t put off little Manuel.
It quickly became evident he hit the ball very well, so, despite some raised eye-brows among the traditional elements of the club, he was allowed to play with the younger players and eventually it became impossible to ignore his talent.
As well as a blockbuster of a forehand, a feathery drop shot and the rest of the game that was eventually good enough to match the best, Santana’s biggest asset was probably his shy, toothy grin. After all, any cockiness from a ball boy would not have been tolerated, so his affability helped him break through the social barriers.
Grand Slam glory
Santana’s first triumph came when he won a five-set final at Roland Garros over the defending champion, Nicola Pietrangeli, in 1961. He went on to win Roland Garros again in 1964 and then, proving he wasn’t a one-court pony, he triumphed on the grass of Forest Hills in 1965, beating Cliff Drysdale to win the US title.
Following victory over Drysdale, he was carried shoulder high by a knot of Spanish supporters all the way back down the long path to the clubhouse, and those pictures were spread over the newspapers in Spain.
Santana’s deeds were beginning to create interest among the masses but it was not until the following year, when he skipped his beloved French to concentrate on the one title that he knew would change things, Wimbledon, that he really made the breakthrough.
Wimbledon, in those days, was tennis, and even those who knew nothing of the game were aware that it meant something special. So when Santana beat Dennis Ralston in the final, he returned to Spain to be feted at every turn and embraced in a huge public ceremony in Madrid by Franco himself. The floodgates were open – now everyone was to play tennis.
There isn’t a Spanish player on the tour today who will not point, with gratitude, to Santana and say: “He started it, we owe it to him.”
That’s not to say the generation of this decade would not have come to prominence, but Santana’s achievements ensured that the game of tennis spread out among the general Spanish public earlier and more quickly than would otherwise have been possible.
Next generation
Another Manuel from a modest background, Orantes, was the first to grab the opportunities that were opening up and he, along with Juan Gisbert and the Arilla brothers, Alberto and Luis, started to turn Spain into a Davis Cup force in the early 1970s.
Orantes, a hugely gifted left-hander, went on to win the US Open (during its three clay court years), and soon another ball boy, Jose Higueras, who grew up at the Real Club de Barcelona, was making his mark.
Higueras has admitted that, once he became the Spanish No. 1 and an international star, it was a little awkward being around the Real Club where his true friends were the waiters.
But by the 1990s, the social etiquette was changing fast and Spanish tennis was starting to dominate the European game. With the emergence of the tall Sergi Bruguera, there began a period of extraordinary Spanish dominance at Roland Garros.
Spanish players won the title nine times in 16 years, beginning with the first of Bruguera’s two titles in 1993 and ending with Rafael Nadal’s quadruple run which ended with that shock defeat at the hands of Robin Soderling in June.
But the history and tradition are not lost and, at the Real Club, they are rightfully proud of the great players who have lifted that Godo trophy.
So much so that, in October this year, Nadal, a member who trains there when he is away from his Mallorca base, was presented with a special trophy to mark the fact that he had won the Godo five times – more than any other player in that club’s very long history.
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