/ 29 January 2006

One man, three sons and his dream

”Every parent has the right to dream. There is no tax on dreaming,” said Marcos Baghdatis’s father as he prepared to watch his son take on the mighty Swiss Roger Federer in the Australian Open tennis final on Sunday.

”I always had the dream that one of my three boys would make it on the world stage. All three were champions in Cyprus,” said Christos Baghdatis.

He was tough on Marinos, Petros and younger brother Marcos.

”Sport is serious, it’s not just for having fun. I hate it when a parent says my child is doing a sport for fun. That is just not good enough,” he said.

But he rejects comparisons with Richard Williams, the outspoken father of the Williams sisters. ”I like to say it’s the story of Christos Baghdatis and his boys,” insists the 55-year-old steel construction worker.

Baghdatis senior, a self-confessed hater of contact sports, is a social tennis player himself.

The big decision came when the family sent Marcos away to a French tennis academy at the age of 14, a decade after he first picked up a tennis racket and started to emulate his older brothers.

”The choice was like between hell and heaven, coming from a small country such as Cyprus,” said Christos.

”But I had a sixth sense, otherwise I would not have sent my son to a strange country, into a strange family, at that age. He was crying for the first three months.”

It was not easy for the family either.

”These past six years I have lost my teeth from the stress and tension just with the idea that he might not make it after all,” he said, smiling through gaps in his teeth.

Christos and his wife Andri opted to watch the match on television from their modest, one-storey home in the sleepy village of Paramytha (‘fairytale’ in Greek) in the hills above the Mediterranean coastal resort of Limassol.

They didn’t want to jinx his winning run in Melbourne. And it could have disrupted his routine ”which is everything for Marcos — who is quite superstitious — during a tournament”.

Christos Baghdatis can always tell how his son will fare, even from thousands of kilometres away.

”If he has that smile on his face, even if he is losing, I know he can do it. But if he is not enjoying the game, then he will lose,” was the forecast from Paramytha.

With Marcos being catapulted to fame and fortune with his giant-killing feats in Melbourne comes the less appealing side of having a celebrity in the family.

”We are living in terror from the media,” said Christos.

On Saturday, a television crew barged their way into the home and started running cables and preparing to camp out in his living room until the time of the match.

”I kicked them out. I will not allow that sort of thing,” said Baghdatis, whose phone has been ringing almost non-stop since Marcos edged Argentina’s David Nalbandian in a semifinal on Thursday filled with high drama.

While Cyprus has been basking in the glory of the Baghdatis against-the-odds triumphs, the father told of how his native Lebanon across the water could also have grounds to be proud.

The Baghdatis family, going back centuries, hails from Ahvaz in the Arab part of Iran on the border with Iraq, hence their name.

They resettled in Lebanon, where Marcos’s father was born in the northern port city of Tripoli.

”If he has the chance to see his father’s country some day, definitely this will awaken the passion about his father’s roots,” said Christos Baghdatis, who moved to Limassol back in 1973 and soon met his Greek Cypriot wife to be.

After the final, Christos plans to visit his Lebanese grandmother and uncles living in Sydney.

As for the match itself, Baghdatis senior says this is just the beginning. ”My son has already made his mark at the international level. But my expectation, and that of Marcos, is much, much higher.”

The father takes no credit for the passion of Baghdatis’s game.

”You have to be born with it. It is a gift from within. I believe Marcos has found out what there is in his soul,” he said.

For father and son, they have reached a parting of the ways.

”Now I have a problem. I can dream no more … Now reality tells me that Marcos will have to work twice as hard to go higher and stay higher. This only he can do. It is his responsibility from now on,” said Christos. – Sapa-AFP