SYMPATHY FOR A TENNIS DEVIL

Trying to Make Sense of the Infamous Jeff Tarango

By Chris Gerby

As soon as I saw the draw for the 1997 French Open, one potential second round matchup jumped out at me. Thomas Muster vs. Jeff Tarango -- two of the most irritable players in the sport slated to tangle on the clay. It very nearly didn't happen, as each player had to come from behind to win five set marathons in the first round. Once those hurdles were cleared, however, the stage was set for some down and dirty fireworks.

It didn't take long for Tarango to live up to his "bad boy" image. He argued calls, did impersonations of Muster's macho swagger and exaggerated grunt, made loud wisecracks, and held up Muster when he was trying to serve. The Austrian also did his share of delay tactics on Tarango's serve, deliberately attempted to hit him with an overhead, and refused to shake his hand when the eventful four set battle came to an end.

Both players incurred hoots and whistles from the crowd, but it was Tarango who walked off to a rousing standing ovation. He may have come up lacking in the sportsmanship department, but he certainly had put on a show out there and was the player willing to let bygones be bygones following match point. Plus, he had saved one of his best antics for last. After falling during the final game of the match, Tarango asked the ballboy to clean off the back of his shirt (a fairly common practice in clay court matches). In a moment of comic inspiration, he also had the ballboy use the towel to clean off his balding head. Like him or not, he'd provided a droll image which was one of the most memorable of the fortnight.

Afterwards, the fiery Californian was both philosophical and unapologetic about his behavior. "Tennis is tough, a cross between chess and boxing," Tarango explained. "I don't think you can give anybody an edge. Thomas didn't want to give me an edge, and I didn't want to give him an edge...It's a mind game as well as a physical game." He wrote off the grunt imitation as an exasperated reply to trying circumstances -- "At some point it's just like an echo in my head. It's crazy how much he's grunting. He's grunting when I'm hitting the ball; he's grunting when he's hitting the ball; he's grunting when I'm tossing the ball in the air. That's just ridiculous."

Muster was just as convinced that he was justified in not shaking hands. "It is the first time I have ever done this, but I have my reasons. We know the history of Jeff. He's not an easy guy and everyone knows that. I know I'm not always great, but anything I do like querying line calls is within the rules. I don't think what we saw today was very professional." Alas, these sentiments would be far more credible if they came from a player with a shorter tennis misbehavior rap sheet than Muster's.

Tarango's antics are no problem when the opponent understands him and can laugh it off, but of course it gets ugly when the opponent is ultra-competitive, dead serious, angry-at-the-world Thomas Muster. This is the same Muster who complained bitterly that Brad Gilbert was trying to distract and belittle him at the '96 US Open. It's also the same Muster who furiously stormed off the court in Davis Cup, quitting in the middle of a tie because he thought the Brazilian fans were abusive. Tarango certainly has a history of offending people, but Muster also has a storied history of being wildly offended. Put the two together and we're just lucky Muster didn't punch him (another Thomas "antic" from the past).

Muster's claims that everything he does is professional and within the rules are quite laughable when one recalls the time he spat on Patrick Rafter at the '94 French Open. Better yet, the late 1995 incident in Frankfurt in which he growled "You can wipe my ass, too," to Michael Chang while Chang was wiping away some sweat from the court after a fall. Muster even pointed said posterior in his devoutly religious opponent's direction.

He sounded quite a bit like Tarango when he explained his actions in Frankfurt. "I don't want to be a nice guy, don't want to slip my games to others. I don't want to be nice to other players, then I would be a nice opponent and lose against everybody. I am rather a tough cookie. You have to realize that tennis is not only played by shots. It is played by the mind." Apparently the mind games are only fair if Muster is the one playing them.

Tarango's antics were nothing personal. "I've never had a problem with him," he said afterwards of Muster. To understand how he could carry on the way he did without having a grudge against the opponent, you have to get into the Jeckyll-and-Hyde psychology of Jeff Tarango. Off the court, he is a soft spoken, affable gentleman who lists philosophy and bridge among his hobbies. On the court, he is a sarcastic loudmouth eminently capable of infuriating umpires and players alike. Even French Open supervisor Bill Gilmour, who was summoned to oversee the Tarango-Muster shenanigans, admits Jeff is a pretty good guy, "but he gets a little edgy when he plays tennis."

Tarango himself is well aware of this dichotomy. "It's strange. When I'm on the court, I'm intense, I'm fired up, I'm going to massacre anyone that's on the other side of the net. When I'm off the court, a kind of metamorphosis goes on. My dad has never really been able to explain it. I tell him it's his fault for being a boxer and getting hit in the head too much."

I saw Tarango chatting with his wife and some friends after a match at the US Open last year and he really did seem like the nicest, calmest person you'd ever hope to meet. Of course, his personality changes dramatically when he gets out there in the heat of battle. Tennis can be an incredibly frustrating sport, even for a recreational Sunday hacker. Multiply that frustration by twenty when you're playing world class professional tennis for a living, where the pressure's on you to win every match and you aren't blessed with enough talent to win them easily. It all drives Tarango to do things he ordinarily would not, but they're usually not meant to be taken personally.

Jim Courier, who undergoes a similar (albeit generally less extreme) transformation when he takes a tennis court, understands. "Jeff has always been a unique character. He's a fine tennis player, but unfortunately that's been overshadowed by what happened at Wimbledon. He's an intelligent guy, always looking for a way to provoke you, get a rise out of you. I like Jeff, but I might be in a minority. When you become a marked man, people are a little bit rougher on you." Even gentlemanly Chang admits to a significant character change when the pressure is on. "I am basically a nice guy. But when I go out there I want to beat the guys as badly as I can. But then when I leave the court I am a nice guy again."

Jeff Tarango is by no means perfect. He allows his temper to get the best of him at times and his competitive juices tend to overflow in ways which aren't always pretty. He certainly has his disrespectful moments, but that comes with the territory when an imperfect guy pours his heart and soul into every match. Finding his meltdowns entertaining or not is simply a case of different strokes for different folks. Some people prefer the quiet, stoic precision of a Borg, Lendl, or Sampras. Others prefer the fiery, boisterous, frequently impolite spirit of a Connors, McEnroe, or Tarango.

If you go for the kind of edgy, wise-ass humor of a Dennis Miller, the odds are more likely that you'll find Tarango an entertaining presence both on and off the court. Consider the following anecdotes and see where you stand...

• When an umpire asked prior to one of his doubles matches at Wimbledon in 1995 whether there were any questions, Tarango replied, "Yes. Is there a God?"
• Upon learning that the Dalai Lama had just moved to the Montpellier region of France where Tarango shares an apartment with wife Benedicte, he had the following to say about the spiritual leader. "He's trying to get close to me, I think... I heard he can levitate. I think I have a hell of a lot to learn from him."
• While starting to mount a comeback in the French Open match against Muster, Tarango blurted out, "Who wins between the tortoise and the hare?"
• When a chair umpire made a critical overrule in the third set tiebreak of the tense '96 US Open encounter between Tarango and Marcelo Rios, Jeff told him "you should be on talk shows; that's a joke!"

Even if you're one of the many who hate Tarango, he doesn't mind. "I love the crowd if they boo me every day. It fires me up, makes me play my best tennis. I played some of my best tennis in college when fraternities were throwing beer on me. I'm used to everything, seen it all. To me it's exciting. If tennis was like that every day, I think everybody would be having a lot more fun."

Of course, even Tarango knows there are limits to what he can get away with. "You have to say what's on your mind, but you can't get fined $73,000. I think there's a definite in-between there. I think I've found it. I have a good balance. I'm not a person who curses or goes nuts."

The need to find that right balance also applies off the court, where Tarango has often been outspoken about the problems he sees in the sport he loves. In the months following the Rebeuh incident, he was despondent about the powerfully negative consequences of speaking his mind. "I don't want to get into any specifics, because every time I get into specifics, I get fined. Some people are obviously a lot more powerful than me in tennis, and, you know, that is the way things go. So I guess, hurrah for the power."

Although still resigned to this reality, Tarango seems a bit more at ease these days. He still calls them how he sees them, but is now careful about naming names. "I'm not going to ever bite my tongue, I'm just going to rephrase it," he has defiantly announced. This new approach was on display at the '97 French Open, as Michael Barkann of the USA Network interviewed him in the stands, where Tarango was watching the fourth round match between Chang and Sergi Bruguera. "It would be nice to get a close monitor on...everything that goes on behind the scenes," he said, but stopped short of specifics. "I'm trying to play every week, so it's pretty tough. I'm still making all my money from that, you know."

Jimmy Arias knows. He brought forth evidence which corroborates Tarango's claim that Rebeuh is far too cozy with certain players, but he never would have done it had he still been making his living as a professional tennis player. "I told Jeff I sympathized with him about Rebeuh. I wouldn't have done it if I was still on the tour. You never want to get on the wrong side of the umpires."

Even before the Rebeuh incident, Tarango was speaking out on behalf of fellow lower-ranked players who frequently have no voice and no feasible recourse. "We don't have player representatives anymore. We don't have anybody who'll defend us when we're fined. It just goes straight to an appeal board. One person decides and that's it... We have to sue the tour, or whatever body fines us, in order for us to try to get our $500 or $1,000 back, so it makes no sense for us to try to do this, because the lawyer fees alone are more than that."

Could it be that reputed "psycho" Jeff Tarango is actually the conscience of the game? He may not have all the answers, but at least he is raising important questions. In a sport where the procedure for holding the draw at the '96 US Open was blatantly overhauled to benefit top American players, where rumors about substance abuse are rampant but rarely addressed, where an umpire widely thought to be biased is still in the chair for Grand Slam singles finals, and where the daily schedule can be changed in an instant depending on when the star players feel like taking the court, it's important that someone make a little noise.

Of course, Jeff Tarango might not be our first choice to fill this watchdog role. It's often hard to tell where the paranoia ends and where the valuable insight begins with a player so adept at getting himself in trouble. Love him or hate him, though, Tarango keeps things interesting. He is a truly unique individual in a sport often criticized for its lack of charismatic characters. He may forever be known as the madman who stormed out of Wimbledon, but Tarango won't beat himself up over his "enfant terrible" status. "I can't worry about my reputation preceding me. I just go about my life day-to-day. I try my hardest on the court every day. I'm a player. That's the way it is. I just come out every day and play my hardest. If something happens and I give a good beef about it, you know, I think the chair officials understand that everybody makes mistakes. I make mistakes, they make mistakes, and we go on from there."

by Chris Gerby