Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Down And Out At The U.S. Open: Tarango Fizzles Without A Fight

George Vecsey New York Times

With its history of always-a-full-moon antics, the U.S. Open was waiting for Jeff Tarango to strut his stuff. But New York is letting us down. Two days into the tournament and there has been no nuttiness to match the events at formerly staid and stuffy Wimbledon.

Tarango came and went Tuesday, losing to Yevgeny Kafelnikov, 6-0, 6-4, 7-5. The Russian displayed a bit too much of himself by wearing only an athletic supporter beneath his drenched white, transluscent tennis shorts - can’t some sponsor give the kid some underwear? - while Tarango showed the despair of a man who may have wrecked his career.

Nobody new was accused of chicanery by Tarango and nobody at all was slapped by Tarango’s wife. And no Brit hit a ball girl in the head with a flying tennis ball, the way Tim Henman accidentally did at Wimbledon, and no American turned up missing for doubles, the way goofy Murphy Jensen did at Wimbledon.

This is the town where McEnroe and Connors and Nastase bayed at the moon, where Borg was often bushwacked when the sun went down, where the crowd usually cries for frontier justice. But the reception for Monica Seles on Monday night was not as flamboyant as I thought it would be. And Tarango was much too passive Tuesday.

Tarango was not well known until he walked off the court at Wimbledon, claiming the chair umpire was against him, and his wife, Benedicte, slapped the official, Bruno Rebeuh. Tarango then accused the umpire of favoritism, and his wife said she was proud to have slapped the umpire.

There had never been anything like this, and surely not at Wimbledon. Since then, Tarango has been fined nearly $70,000 by all the jurisdictions of tennis - too numerous and too confusing to be struggled with here - and he has been suspended for the next Wimbledon and one other Grand Slam event.

Tuesday, Tarango did question a few calls - once with a finger-wagging inquisition, once with a derisive two-handed wave, and once by rolling around on his back like a puppy with an itch - but at the end, he shook hands with the official, and left the court passively.

“I have probably slept 2 hours in the last week, and the fact that I was able to get out there and get my serve in was pretty amazing to me,” Tarango said at his news conference. “I am completely exhausted, and devastated from this whole thing. And I just - I can barely maintain, to be honest.”

“How long do you think this will last for you?” somebody asked.

“As long as I keep being persecuted,” Tarango said.

“Persecuted by whom?”

“Want me to get another $60,000 fine?” replied Tarango, who seems to have lost a few hairs and gained a few wrinkles since his outburst.

“Jeff, do you feel that you are a kind of a scapegoat?”

“I feel like a victim. That is probably the word I would use. You know, that is pretty much how I feel. Used and abused.”

He added that it would cost him $200,000 in lawyers’ fees to appeal the penalties, that the penalties were costing him $150,000, that he was taking two sleeping pills every night, and that his chiropractor “says I am so stressed out, he can’t even turn my neck.”

But Tarango said he had found some solace in his charges: “Everybody who is sane has been pretty supportive.” He did not name names. He said he was thinking of going back to college - to Stanford, the school that gave us John “Pits of the World” McEnroe of tennis fame and Jack “Read My Middle Finger” McDowell of baseball fame.

Tarango was asked how his wife was taking all of this. In Wimbledon, she had stood by her man with an overhand smash. In the home office of in-your-face, Benedicte Tarango observed, quietly and elegantly.

“She asked me if I wanted her to come and watch the match today,” Tarango said. “She said she probably couldn’t do it. I asked her to come and watch the match for me. I wanted her to be with me. She said when I came off the court, ‘Don’t worry about it, I understand. You know, you tried your hardest, and that is all you can do.”’

He trudged out to restructure his life. It would have been cruel to ask him to entertain the mob, but somebody more secure must step forth and protect the U.S. Open’s reputation for rowdiness.