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Plenty to play for Spain, Australia ready for Davis Cup final
Updated: Thursday December 14, 2000 12:12 PM
BARCELONA, Spain (CNN/SI) -- If Spain needs any extra motivation to win its first Davis Cup, then the brash 19-year-old Aussie Lleyton Hewitt will undoubtedly provide it. Spain's top player, Alex Corretja, openly criticized Hewitt's on-court fist-pumping and chest-thumping after beating him in last week's Masters Cup in Lisbon. Hewitt reportedly snubbed Corretja over the weekend during practice on the indoor clay surface at the Palau Sant Jordi, the 1992 Olympic arena where the three-day Davis Cup final opens Friday. "I'll confirm what I've said in Lisbon," said Corretja, one of the most popular players on the ATP Tour. "Hewitt is an unfriendly guy and he thinks he's a know-it-all when he's on the court. He doesn't have any respect for the opponent. "Let's say he's not my best friend of the circuit." This will be Spain's third final, and the last two were both losses to Australia on grass (1965 and 1967 in Sydney and Brisbane). Australia has won the cup 27 times. But this time the matches are on red clay in a country that produces the world's best player on the slow, long-rally surface. "It's a very difficult final to get to," Corretja said. "We have to take advantage of playing at home. If winning the Davis Cup were so easy, we would already have one." Nobody is counting out Australia. The defending champions beat France a year ago in a final on the same surface. Despite some Davis Cup turmoil with Mark Philippoussis, the cup hero in 1999 who was left off the team after a series of disputes with administrators and teammates, the Aussies still have two-time U.S. Open champion Pat Rafter and Hewitt in singles. "Rafter and Hewitt are the men to beat," said 20-year-old Juan Carlos Ferrero, the youngest member of the Spanish team. "Their current play is very solid, although on clay it looks like Hewitt adapts himself better than Rafter." John Newcombe and Tony Roche, the Australian captain-coach duo, trained for two weeks in the resort town of Marbella on Spain's Mediterranean Costa del Sol. Rafter missed last year's winning final with a shoulder injury and is probably the most motivated Aussie. "We've got some unfinished business -- Pat Rafter's name is not on the cup," Newcombe said recently. "We're not known for leaving things undone, so I think you can start writing his name on that cup." The presence of Newcombe and Roche contrasts to the sad absence of Spain's most famous tennis legend, Manuel Santana. Santana, who played in Spain's two Davis Cup losses to Australia, was stripped of the Davis Cup captaincy earlier this year when Corretja, Carlos Moya and Albert Costa decided they wanted their own personal coaches. Corretja later admitted he regretted how the matter was handled. An openly upset Santana is skipping the final to play a senior event in Miami. "I've said before that I was not going to be in Sant Jordi and I will keep my word," he told Sunday's Spanish sports daily Marca. Santana said his firing had "ripped the heart out of my dream [of] helping Spain win the Davis Cup." He said he hoped to watch the final on TV along with Australian great Fred Stolle. "I'm sure both of us will become very nervous in front of the TV set," he said. Santana, who runs a tennis club in Marbella -- not far from the Australians' practice venue -- has also reportedly been criticized for welcoming the Aussies to his hometown. "If I had had enough clay courts I would have invited the Australians to my own club," he told London's Sunday Times. "That was how you behaved when I played. The Aussies are my friends and always will be."
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