Back in the day, before junior tennis players started chasing ITF points all over the globe, American Junior Tennis held out a carrot of higher achievement to its players. The Junior Davis Cup Team.
Junior players received an automatic berth on this elite team if they were selected to play Junior Wimbledon and the other Junior majors. But for the rest of us junior players, the ultimate achievement was an invitation to the Junior Davis Cup tryouts.
1982 Junior Davis Cup Team
Back Row: Assistant Coach Dennis Emory, Chuck Willenborg, Brad Ackerman, Eric Rosenfeld, Mark Styslinger, Michael Kurus, Tim Pawcett, Dan Goldie, Coach Brad Lauderback.
Front Row: President of USTA David Markin, Jonathan Canter, Rick Leach, Sean Ross, Barry Buss (with topsiders), Lawson Duncan.
The Junior Davis Cup tryout was a boot camp of sorts where the top 36 remaining players were invited to a central site to playoff against each other with four slots available on the team, won by those who got hot at the right time and were able to withstand the grueling two match a day round robin format.
It turned out that some major players were in those tryouts, including several who did not make the team but went on to became famous pros. To name three: Aaron Krickstein, Richey Rennenberg, and Jim Pugh. That's how tough it was.
This was the year 1982. At year's beginning, I was slated to have a breakout year and finally get some kind of foothold amongst the junior tennis elite. I had been knocking on the door for a couple years, but still had not broken through completely yet. This also being my senior year in high school, I was being recruited for college, so the pressure of every match was magnified.
Aaron Krickstein was among the future elite players who couldn't make the team.
I still needed to put up some excellent results to secure myself a scholarship at one of college tennis' elite schools. I had not done enough yet, but all the major schools had made contact. They just needed to see some results early in the year to justify granting me an athletic scholarship.
Well, those early results didn't come, quite the contrary, as I choked one big match after another away. A year that started with great hope descended quickly in to a series of very public tennis meltdowns as I saw my tennis and academic future slipping away in a miasma of alcohol and drug-induced behavior.
I was 17 with four fingers dipped in talent and a thumb pressing hard on the self-destruct button. Nobody knew what to do or what to say, for I was behaving completely unlike a talented teenager.
My tennis fate pretty well sealed to the minor leagues of college tennis, I made one last ditch effort at sobering up and trying to play some decent tennis and I got lucky. California's Ojai championships came and I threw together a great run of play and results right before all the top college coaches in the country.
The irony in the whole event was they were not watching my matches to check me out, they were all recruiting my opponents. Well, I could not have picked a better time
to enter the zone, and as we drove out of Ojai, I had several scholarship offers from major schools to choose from, from the very programs and coaches who vowed I
would never set foot on their campus after having first row seats to witness my unsettling court psychotics during my early year struggles.
After Ojai came Southern California's ClF championships, an obscenely large 11 round event covering all of SoCal's high school tennis teams and players. My good fortune continued through the early rounds, landing me as one of the final 16 players to shoot it out over two days to crown the next ClFchampion.
Tryouts were at the famed Vic Braden tennis college in the exclusive Coto de Caza development.
The tennis Gods chose to shine on me again as I was able to grind out a couple long ones, becoming a very unlikely champion of this very prestigious event.
Now armed with a plethora of good wins (bless Socal junior tennis where every event is chock full of opportunities to perform against the nation's elite), JDC tryouts were now a possibility, but I was going to have to petition for entry for the invites had already
gone out.
I again got lucky as one player pulled out of the tryouts and I was granted the final of the 36 invites to take place at Vic Braden's Coto De Caza tennis facility in Orange County, a little over an hour away from my home, my home courts so to speak, outdoor slow hard courts within Socal's dry hot heat.
I was playing the best I had ever played, and I had a fighting chance as I proudly drove in to town to do battle amongst my nation's best. Thirty-Six players were divided into four groups of nine. You were to play two singles matches a day for four straight days, with a two mile run in the morning to get the kinks out, and some kick-ass agility drills at day's end.
It was not exactly my idea of cooling down after a gnarly day of play, but I was so very grateful for the opportunity to try out, there would be no complaining. The tennis
Gods were not done with me quite yet as my quality play from the prior two events picked right up where it left off, and to everyone's surprise, not the least being
my own, I swept through my eight matches with the loss of only one set.
This included wins over Jim Grabb who also went on to great success on the tour in both singles and doubles. Lawson Duncan who was an elite junior at the time, And also Larry Scott, who eventually became head of the WTA.
One of my 1982 victims, Larry Scott who went on to head the WTA.
There I was, two months ago a certifiable psychopath on my way to Long Beach State
to party and play my way into tennis obscurity, now in the playoffs, supposedly securing myself a spot on the team for the summer. Not so fast though.
The coaches called me in to talk to me about my back to back tanks in two meaningless matches after my place on the team had been won. They were concerned that I would be representing the United States of America. And tanking was not an option under that banner. After much discussion, I walked out of the meeting awaiting their decision as to whether they would take me on the team with my behavioral transgressions.
I got lucky and later that evening was offered a spot on the squad and I proudly accepted my place on the United States Junior Davis Cup team for 1982.
It was an amazing group, notable not only for the outstanding players who didn't make the team, but equally for those who did. There were two other players who would eventually become my teammates at UCLA, Chuck Willenborg and Michael Kurus, who had been the top junior in my age group for years.
There were three other players who went on to become elite college and pro players: Rich Leach at USC and Dan Goldie at Stanford. Then there was Jonathan Cantor, another top 30 tour player, who was (and still is) the youngest player ever to win an ATP point at the tender age of 14 years 11 months.
I would love to say this story had a happy ending but it did not. Upon getting the news of my making the team, needless to say I was a little excited. It was time to call home and report my good fortunes to my father, who at the time I had been locking horns with really badly.
Jonathan Canter: at 14 years he was the youngest ever to win an ATP point.
But nothing eased the tensions in our relationship better than a good tennis result, so to the phones I rushed, one more time trying to draw up from a dry well some semblance of approval from the most influential person in my life. If this didn't get an "I'm Proud of You!", or that always elusive "Atta Boy!" nothing would.
Dad gets on the phone and I explain my four-hour victory in the first match and how I made the team because of it. Without hesitation, he asked back "How did you do in your other matches?"
I quickly glossed over the results of those saying, "Oh I lost but they didn't matter, I had already made the team and wait 'til you see all these cool clothes with the USA
on them and that I have a wild card in to the US Open juniors now.
He stopped me mid-sentence and asked, "Why did you lose?"
Somewhat taken back, I stammered something dismissive back again about how that didn't matter and started back on my stream of all the great things this meant for my summer and so forth, and he stopped me again and asked, "'What do you mean that doesn't matter? Why did you lose those matches?"
Those all too familiar feelings of shock and shame and utter disbelief rushed over me and I assumed my role in that sicko crazy punishing kinda love dance we did, where nothing was ever good enough for him, no matter how hard I tried or how well I did.
On the road in 1982 in a bug, with the Dead, when it didn't suck to be me.
I got off the phone as quickly as possible, hung up, and had one of what was to be many moments of clarity about my family of origin: that hoping for any sense or
feeling of approval from them was just never going to happen.
I was going to have to learn how to get those feelings of approval for myself, from myself, and since I was a 17 year-old alcoholic in training, that would take some practice to accomplish.
But in my gut I knew I had achieved something profound those two weeks at the JDC Camp, something I was determined to not let my father diminish with some ill-placed words. I wasn't a little kid anymore; I was playing this sport for myself, by myself now, and though as much as I wanted his approval, the challenge for myself was to not let him define me any longer.
I pulled my '65 bug back on to the long winding road home, full of the feeling of
satisfaction born from accomplishment, a feeling I had experienced often of late from my exploits on a tennis court. As the sun set and the Dead played, my head
and heart overflowing with wave upon wave of pride for what I had just achieved, I remember uttering, "I could get really used to this."
