Stephen Bierley Tennis
Korda the kick. Korda the cartwheel. Korda the Australian Open champion. There is no better story in any sport than when someone of obvious and undoubted talent finally achieves the major victory that his ability so richly deserves, particularly if it arrives as the minute hand on his career clock nudges towards midnight.
We yearn for the best to prove they are the best, for this touches something inside us that transcends mere loyalty or partisanship. Holland, we still know, should have won football’s 1974 World Cup, and Jimmy White should have been the world snooker champion. But sport is full of such annoying anomalies.
Petr Korda’s flair has never been in doubt: the whipped top-spin backhand and the crushing forehand, hit with such immaculate timing that the ball’s sudden and sharp acceleration makes the Czech, now based in Monaco, appear to be using a magic wand rather than a racket.
What has been in doubt, though, and frequently, is Korda’s mental resolve. It has taken only the uproar of a butterfly’s wings on an adjacent court to send his mind tumbling into free-fall.
So his victory over Chile’s Marcelo Rios in the Melbourne final recently was both a surprise and a delight, rushing Korda up the world rankings to No 2 and opening up the possibility of him reaching the very pinnacle of tennis.
After all, the prosaic Austrian Thomas Muster managed to reign as the No 1 for six weeks in 1996, so why not Korda? Many will hope to see Korda again strike the form that brought his first Grand Slam title in Australia and, at the ripe old age of 30, put him in line to challenge Pete Sampras for the world’s top ranking.
It is a daunting task. “But I’m going to try to be the best,” says Korda, “even if it is just for one week. It would be an unbelievable dream come true.” Certainly Sampras is vulnerable; he lost to Korda in the fourth round of last year’s US Open and was then beaten by Slovakia’s Karol Kucera in the Australian quarter-finals.
Those defeats hurt the American immensely, for his main aim in life is to break Roy Emerson’s record of 13 Grand Slam titles. Sampras has 10. His second ambition is to finish 1998 as the world No 1 for the sixth successive year, thereby surpassing the record he holds with his fellow American Jimmy Connors.
Korda, who was born in Prague, had reached the top 10 by the time he was 23 years old, and the following year, 1992, he won through to the final of the French Open, in which he was beaten by Jim Courier, the American who at that time was at his unbending, massive- hitting best.
In 1993, Korda won the Grand Slam Cup in Munich, defeating Germany’s Michael Stich in the final after beating Sampras in a titanic semi-final, which ran to 13-11 in the fifth set. “Those were the days when the Grand Slam Cup really meant something,” says Korda.
It appeared that the man with the gangling 2m frame, who eschews weight training for fear of ripping his slender limbs to pieces, was on the point of a major breakthrough. Yet by 1995 his career looked as good as over, having played in constant pain from a groin injury for 18 months.
Surgery was the only cure, but his fear of such an operation forced him to struggle on to the point of complete collapse. It was Tony Pickard, now Greg Rusedski’s coach, who had virtually to drag him into hospital.
“I was gone from tennis,” he admits. “But afterwards I built a dream to win another tournament. I managed that [Doha, 1996] and then my aim was to get back in the top 10, which I managed last year.” In late 1997 after another operation, this time on his sinuses, Korda decided that 1998 was to be his final full-time year on the circuit. His daughter, Jessica Regina, whose fifth was last week, was not seeing enough of her father, and Korda’s thoughts turned towards retirement.
Only he will ever know how much such a decision affected his mental approach to the Australian Open. But as the tournament unfolded so the inevitability of him winning grew and grew. He had been due to meet Sampras at the semi-final stage, a match enthusiastically anticipated from the moment the draw was made. But Kucera put paid to that hope.
Korda duly beat the Slovak, leaving only Rios between him and the title. Even then it was perfectly possible, given his past record of illnesses and injuries – some real, some imagined – to believe he might screw it up at the last. “That’s the trouble with the Czechs,” said an acquaintance who lived in Prague for several years.
Not this time. Korda, winning in straight sets, fell to his knees, just as he had seen Bjorn Borg do at Wimbledon. Then came the scissor-kicks – borrowed from a Czech actor – and the cartwheels.
“It’s been such a long ride and I’m so happy with myself that I went to the last stop.” It now remains to be seen whether the impetus of his first Grand Slam win can carry him above Sampras, who has been at No 1 for 98 weeks and 214 weeks in total since he took over from Courier in April, 1993.
Since the ATP rankings began in 1973, 13 players have achieved the No 1 status, and since September 1993 only Andre Agassi, currently mounting a spirited revival, and Muster, very much on the down slope, have denied Sampras the top spot.
“The thing about Petr is that if he goes out on the court feeling good then anything is possible,” said the Australian Scott Draper, who lost to Korda in the second round in Melbourne.
If Korda continues to produce his Australian form, and Sampras is truly on the wane, it is possible he might yet achieve his “unbelievable dream”. But there are others, notably Patrick Rafter, the US Open champion from Australia, and Yevgeny Kafelnikov, the former French champion from Russia, who are also aiming high.
In the long run, Agassi may still provide the most potent threat, for he is currently performing with the zeal of the freshly converted and beat Sampras in the San Jose final just over a week ago.
If Sampras should struggle at Indian Wells and at the Lipton Championships in Key Biscayne next month, then everyone in the top 10 will carry fresh hope of dislodging him. Sampras’s form remains the great imponderable.
Worrying times have been a way of life to Korda; barely a year seems to have gone by in his tennis career without some catastrophe befalling him. Most of them, save for the obvious injuries, have been self-inflicted – a permanent struggle against the mental demons that have whispered in his ears to do precisely the opposite of what is best.
Yet out of these trials has come belated success, and all the sweeter because it was unexpected.
Before the Australian Open final he had been virtually unable to eat for 48 hours, and he admitted: “They were the worst moments of my life.” You wanted to agree, except you knew Korda’s life has been a running saga of worst moments.
Had he lost to Rios no one would have been unduly surprised; that he won was a triumph for the man and an undoubted privilege for those who watched. Whatever else he achieves, even that No 1 spot, nothing will ever compare with that moment.