1975: At Calcutta: U.S. Men’s and Women’s Team Ties.      

In the Men’s and Women’s Team events, in both the Championship Category (teams ranked from the last World’s #1-#16), and in Category II (teams ranked #17-#32), which is where the 17th-ranked U.S. Men’s Team and the 18th-ranked Women’s Team were placed, there were two round robin groups (Group A and Group B) of 8 teams each. It’s important for everyone reading this to realize the significance of our trying to get our U.S. Teams out of Category II: for 17th place was the very best our Teams could do this year, even if we won every tie—9 straight. It wasn’t the precise ranking of your Team that originally mattered so much (#28 or #20, say), it was the 16-team bracket (#17-#32 for the U.S.) that your Team was locked into for two years.

Our aim, our hope, more for the stronger men than the women, was to get through the eight-team round robin as #1 or #2, then win our crisscross "sudden death" semifinal tie that would insure us of being one of the two teams advanced to the Championship Category at the next, 1977 World’s in Birmingham, England. So far as we were concerned, #18 was as good as #17—and our so-called final would be anticlimactic: the real final would be our semifinal, the tie that was a must for us to win.

In the crisscross ties then, the winner of Group A would play the runner-up from Group B. And the winner of Group B the runner-up from Group A. The winners of these ties would then play in the final. Of course, theoretically, this could be a rematch. If say, the winner of Group A were to beat the runner-up of Group B, and the runner-up of Group A were to beat the winner of Group B, then the winner and runner-up who’d played in the original round-robin would be back playing each other again—with, in the Championship Category, perhaps a profoundly different result. Hypothetically, the format obviously left something to be desired. For if, say, China in the Championship Group A, thought by many to be the best team, were to be upset and come second, while over in Group B the last round robin tie would be between two previously unbeaten teams, it might be better for one of these teams to dump that tie. Or, if China, say, didn’t want the Group B winner to get to the final, they, as yet undefeated, might dump a round-robin tie to become the Group A runner-up and so be able to confront that Group B winner in the semi’s. But of course what country would want so ruthlessly, so unsportsmanlike, to attain its strategic or political end that, in playing by the rules, it would actually be a loser?

U.S. Women’s Team Ties

So how’d our Women’s Team do?

Take a guess: "When I do sit-ups," says one of our girls, "I don’t go all the way, I just go half way." To put it bluntly, win or lose, they didn’t play one—well, maybe one—meaningful exciting 3-2 tie with any of the nine opponents we faced. We were just never in the action, never contending. As a consequence—with our 5-4 (14-14) 25th-place finish—we stayed mired in the #17-32 Category II.

At the outset here, I want to thank Leah ("Miss Ping") Neuberger and Australia’s Doug Stewart (who lived in the States for a while) for helping me out with info on the U.S. Women’s ties when necessity and desire called me to cover any simultaneously-played Men’s matches.

In our first tie, against Nigeria, the weakest team in our Group, Olga won her match in 3 games. Judy then easily defeated veteran Ethel Jacks, whom Miss Ping remembered playing against quite a few years ago. And Judy and Angelita took the doubles. A 3-0 sweep for the U.S.

Our 2nd tie was against the Netherlands—and since their men were good, we figured the women were too. So I wasn’t going to play Olga (our #4) again. Patty, however, was sick. She wanted to be out there on court, wished she could be, but was weak—had had only broth and toast in two days, hadn’t hit that first warm-up ball, and was in no condition to play. So what else was I going to do but pencil in Angie and Judy for singles. Rosal had taken her turn at being sick in Nagpur and of course, like a lot of other people, still had diarrhea. Worse, the discomfort was compounded because the diarrhea pills the doctor had given her made her throw up, so she often preferred either not to take the pills or to take them and eat little or nothing. Since Angie obviously wasn’t at her best, and since Soltesz seemed more into wanting to play here than in Nagpur, I decided to play Judy and Olga in the doubles.

Sonja Heltzel, the Netherlands #1—who in the Singles would beat Terry Foldy after the Swiss girl had taken out Rosal, and who would be up 2-0 and deuce in the 4th before losing to Brigette Thiriet, the French #2—barely beat Bochenski, 23-21 in the 3rd. Judy, down 20-18 in the 1st, rallied beautifully to win the game. But then, though her momentum carried her to a 13-7 lead in the 2nd, she couldn’t hold it. Again down 20-18 in the 3rd, Judy again got the ad—but couldn’t win. This was the best any American girl would play in Calcutta.

Psychically, this was a very important match, for had Judy won, we might have done what we were not about to do, take this tie, and indulge ourselves a little longer with the hope that we might survive for a place in the crisscross semi’s.

Nora Bakker, the Netherlands #2, who would advance to the round of 32 in the Singles before she was easily disposed of by China’s Huai-ying (World #11), defeated Angie 18 and 8. Then in the doubles, Bakker teamed with Marian Van der Vliet and they had to struggle to three games before downing Judy and Olga. So, though we fought well, our hoped-for progress was (temporarily? permanently?) dammed by the Dutch.

We were in deep trouble, for the Netherlands would not be strong enough to finish #1 or #2 in our Group.

Now, almost before we could even take the walkover from Denmark and collect ourselves, our next tie was with Hong Kong (who would be our Group’s #1 and would ultimately be the top team to advance into the Championship Category at the ‘77 World’s).

Martinez was ready to compete—or said she was. And that allowed me to play Angie in the singles and Judy and Patty in the doubles. Patty had been our best doubles player, not only on her major-championship record, but in recent play, and not having had as much practice as the other women, she needed as much court-time as possible. With her close-to-the-table style I wasn’t too worried about her stamina.

In the 1st match, Rosal, wanting to rocket in forehands, never could fire up—missed maybe 7 of Ko Lee Chee’s serves, and was beaten 9 and 12. A Greek coach had been chasing Angie. Said the only way the U.S. could get better was if they had a good coach. Like maybe him? Is that what he said when he caught her?

Against Cheung Siu Ying, Martinez and all of us were in for a surprise. The Hong Kong girl’s game was a mirror image of Patty’s—only better. She, too, played with a hard rubber racket. In the 1st, Patty started with a 7-2 lead. Cheung was having trouble adjusting—but when she did, you could see the match was over. Martinez lost 14 and 10. "Wow," said Patty, "what a weird racket she has."

Later, in the Singles, Martinez would have to play this same girl again, but this time she’d make an adjustment of her own and force her to 4.

Bravo—Judy and Patty clicked in the doubles, won in 3.

But again Angie was flattened, 9 and 12. Such singles scores—66 points in 6 games! In Sarajevo our girls whipped Hong Kong, 3-0. But of course that was an entirely different team—now not one name was recognizable from two years ago.

To be wiped out like that didn’t help our Team morale. But worse was the knowledge that for us the tournament was already over. Belgium had just beaten the Netherlands. That meant that even if we zipped Belgium, Singapore, and Australia in our remaining ties, we couldn’t achieve the only meaningful result, a first or second-place finish that would give us a chance to advance to the Championship Category.

The tournament organizers had planned the pairings carefully so that we would meet toward the end what they thought were the strongest teams—but they’d overlooked Hong Kong with their brand new team.

We did not blitz Belgium—they blitzed us. Angie could average only 14 points against Veronique Germiat (who in the Singles wouldn’t get through the Pre-lims). And Patty (my god, I’d never seen her play so badly!) was beaten 14 and 7 by M.F. Germiat (who wouldn’t qualify for the 1st round of the Singles either). Of course, as I say, everyone knew there was no chance of advancing. Judy and Patty did play pretty well in the doubles, but not good enough to take a game.

Against Singapore, we won...a match—not the tie. Bochenski, really getting into it, annihilated Singles qualifier Tan Kek Hiang, 11 and 9. But then Soltesz was picked apart by Peck Noi Hwoy who’d won the first of her many National Championships back in 1966; Patty and Angie dropped the doubles; and Olga (might as well give her more play) couldn’t connect against Tan.

There just wasn’t any drama to this whole dreary scene until—ridiculous—we were now in danger of falling into Category III. Which would certainly not allow us to show our faces back home.

Fortunately, Australia didn’t look any better than we did. I had to play Judy of course—but who else? I finally decide on Angie—much to Patty’s annoyance. I don’t blame Patty—were I her, unhappy with the way I’d been playing and sure I could do better, I’d have wanted to play too.

Judy began on the right footing—toppled Helen Morrow in 3. And Angie, bless her, beat the 15-year-old Australian Champ Leanne Morrow, a nice girl (I talked to her once on one of the shuttle buses), who always tried hard and who every time she lost looked like she was going to cry.

And then Judy and Angie had nary a problem in the doubles.

Now that the round robin was over, more anticlimactic matches followed. We had to play two crisscross ties for 25th through 28th position in the rankings. Big deal.

Our next opponent, Brazil, had been quarantined at Calcutta’s Dum-Dum Airport for several days because their Team had been dumb-dumb and hadn’t gotten their Yellow Fever shots. They weren’t yellow, and surely they couldn’t be jaundiced of us even when Patty won, Olga won, and Patty and Angie won.

All our girls were starting to look better now—but was there really any point in playing Australia again for one position place?

Perhaps that’s what Patty thought in losing to Christine Little (a Consolation semifinalist) two straight. But Olga played her strongest match of the tournament against Australian Champ Morrow—really moved in and, all-intense, again and again smacked her forehand. Then—surprise—Judy and Angie lost the doubles. But Patty defeated Leanne Morrow. And Olga smashed through Little, 5 and 18.

So at least we righted ourselves a bit by finishing on a winning note.

And what of future U.S. Women’s Teams?

Angie had represented us in the past, but will she be representing us in the future? After she’d returned from training with Stellan Bengtsson last summer she began lifting weights. If she improved her physique, her stamina, she’d improve her game, right? But here in stomach-troubling Calcutta she said she wouldn’t be playing in two years’ time if she didn’t...was it quickly get a slice of pizza or quickly learn to spin? And how encouraging could it be that, on returning home from her disorienting winter-weeks in India, she spent four days in a hospital, sick with typhoid.

As Angelita goes, so goes our Team?

Or am I slighting, say, Judy who’s back at Stanford studying?

Or Olga, who still dreams of being on a ranch?

Or Patty, as a recent letter shows, is once again on the move?

What new hopes will these girls, or others, bring with them in two years’ time?

And will another Captain need to send out a 1,000 letters to raise money for the Team? And will each of the players again be obliged to contribute $300 to represent their Association, their country, as they did this trip?

U.S. Men’s Team Ties

Our first Men’s tie was against weak Wales, whose #1, Alan Griffiths, was sick. I’m such a suspicious sort that I worried until I saw the official line-up that the rumor they’d be forced to play their Captain, Brian Everson, might be a ploy, and that Griffiths would suddenly appear racket in hand. And what difference would that make? Well, I was playing our #5 Paul Raphel—whom I always thought of as being very unpredictable. (Later, the Team visited the Taj Mahal at Agra. The Taj! There, framed in the tourist-entrance archway, was this white marble palace in the sky, blackbirds soaring amongst the white and the blue. A story book sight. But I couldn’t, nor could anyone else, find Paul anywhere; he was "lost." Since I’d promised his mother I’d look after him, I finally foolishly went deep into the native quarter, accompanied by Team supporter Steve Finney, to try to find him—walking fast, pretending I was unafraid and knew exactly what the two of us were doing and where we were going. That is, until an older man came rushing out of a building to tell us to go back to wherever we’d come from as quickly as possible. Which of course we did—to find Paul lolling about on the Agra grass with three bearded "friends" he’d met.) I mean, with such a person reason loses much of its effectiveness and you just have to trust your emotions. I knew if we were to lose our 1st tie, it would be disastrous.

So, with or without his player identification number on his back (sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn’t), Raphel comes on court for his first World Championship match looking very uneasy. Better, as in Nagpur, this guy across from him is Gergely or Jonyer? Graham Davies might be somebody he can beat. With a case of nerves worse than the umpire who miscalled 3 of the first 12 points, Paul seemed partially paralyzed. "You shouldn’t have put him in right off the bat like that," Miss Ping said later—"not in his first World’s." Davies, who in the Singles would soon be playing a deuce game with Tiao Wen-yuan, the Chinese Champion, defeated Paul easily of course.

But, buttressed by Danny Seemiller and Lim Ming Chui’s easy victories, Raphel, in his next match—with John Mansfield who later downed two good Hong Kong players—did well. No butterflies this time—not even when it’s close. He beats Mansfield, 21-19, 22-20, and the U.S. is off to a 5-1 start.

For our 2nd tie, against Italy, who had been shut out by the Netherlands, I thought we could play Seemiller and any combination of others and win. But when, as was my custom, I talked individually to the players about this, our 6-time U.S. Champ D-J Lee, for one, told me I just couldn’t think like that. "I’ve been to a lot more World Championships than you," he said, "and you’ve got to think of all these teams here as being good. You can’t take a chance."

So, alright, I played Danny, D-J, and Peter—and thought we were a lock. As a matter of fact, last summer, the management of our pre-Nagpur training site, Mt. Airy Lodge in the Pennsylvania Pocono’s, was almost ready to bring a foreign team to the U.S. for a Fall Exhibition. We were looking for a team people would come out to see but that we wouldn’t lose to. Italy, we decided, was perfect. How could we be beaten by Italy (World nowhere in ‘71, #31 in ‘73)?

Here in Calcutta, however, Massimo Costantini (Italy #3) began by going through Pradit two straight. Seemiller, following, had no trouble finishing off Guido Bisi (Italy #2) in straight games—but a win from Danny we were already beginning to think of as automatic. Only when D-J (his backhand looked so weak) lost in 3 to Stefano Bosi, the Italian Champion (in the Singles, England’s #5, Jimmy Walker, knocked him out, 19 in the 4th), did we think we might be in danger of unexpectedly dropping this tie.

Chances we had. Lee and Seemiller both beat the Italian #3. But Pradit lost to Bosi who kept scoring with a very good backhand loop. And Danny, after winning the 1st from the Italian Champ, became over-confident, hustled less, lost the 2nd, and couldn’t recover. In the 9th match, against Bisi, Peter was never in it. Italy 5—USA 4. A real shock.

Belgium, our 3rd tie, we blitzed 5-0. Norby Van de Walle, the Belgian who a number of years ago, after growing up in Chicago, represented the U.S. at the World’s, wasn’t in Calcutta. A muscle injury had affected a nerve in his shoulder and he hadn’t played for four months. (Not even recently when several-times U.S. Champion Erwin Klein paid him a visit.)

As it turned out, I could have played Paul this tie, but Belgium had given Greece a 5-4 fight, and after that devastating loss to Italy I valued D-J’s advice all the more. Our aim was to get out of Category II. One more loss and that would likely be impossible.

Hong Kong was the imminent tie we had to win. They had two players who’d come from Mainland China (or so we’d heard), and rumor had it that the Hong Kong Team didn’t go to the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne just before the World’s because they were afraid the eligibility of these two players might be questioned. However, Mr. Chung Wing-Kwong, the President of their Association, claimed in a public statement that the Hong Kong government just didn’t have the money this year to help the Team, and that private sponsorship could finance them only to Calcutta.

 In the 1st match, Li Kuang Tsu—one of Hong Kong’s “pillar players”—beat D-J, 12 and 14. And, oh, that was their #3! No wonder they took 3rd in the ‘74 Asian Games at Teheran. Moreover, of the four players on their team, not one had participated in the last World’s at Sarajevo—so their 26th-place finish there wasn’t relevant.

Next up was Danny against Chiu Man Kuen—a shakehands attacker, “extremely alert and quick in response.” Like Seemiller, he was to get to the round of 64 in the Singles. Danny dropped him, 17, 19.

Hong Kong’s #1 player was Chan Shing Hing who, in the Singles, would be eliminated by China’s Li Peng (World #17), 16, 23, -22, 13. Opposing him was our Chui (himself an ex-Hong Kong Junior Champion). Oh, how Ming hated to sit out against Italy. Right in the middle of that tie his unconscious rose up and he came out with something about not wanting to watch, about wanting to leave! "Players," he said, "need their rest for the next day’s matches." But I think if I hadn’t persuaded him otherwise, and he’d gone back to the hotel, I might later have found him at the nightclub there, dancing! (A Grand Hotel it was. Sally and I had to walk the equivalent of 2-3 blocks through winding corridors to get to our room. And speaking of walking, I couldn’t go anywhere outside the hotel without my Indian guide and two security officers, each of whom carried around by its handle what looked like a schoolchild’s bookbag.)

Chui had been training for this World’s for months—even before he knew for sure he was going to be on the Team. Given a choice by his employer—the World’s or his job--Ming quit his job. Every day in Nagpur, where I roomed with him for a week, he would be faithfully doing his exercises—anywhere and everywhere, at any hour of the day or night. "Dammit, Ming," I’d say, "are you still in the bathroom?"

Chui and Chan split the first two games, both at 22-20. But Ming won the all-important 3rd, 21-18. Neal Fox, you’ll get that one for the USTTA Ratings?

So—U.S. 2-Hong Kong 1— things were looking up. Except that Seemiller was suddenly in the 3rd against that #3 opponent, Li. Danny was doing the same thing he’d done against Italy’s Champ Bosi. Had won the 1st at 10, then relaxed. Danny, Danny, don’t be your own worst enemy. While it’s true that almost all the players facing Seemiller for the first time can’t handle his serves, his anti-spin, his unconventional style, you can’t argue that, just because he loses the 2nd, as he did here, they’ve caught on to him. In the 3rd, again concentrating very well and looping hard, he destroys the somewhat bewildered Tsu.

Then, though Chan beats Lee two straight, Seemiller avenges that loss.

Again, the all-important match is Chui’s. Down 20-17 in the 3rd against Chiu, Ming somehow wins it, 22-20. He comes back to the bench all smiles, and says, "The strange thing is I wasn’t nervous. You know why? Because back home at the Waltham Club I’ve been playing in Benny Hull’s handicap tournaments so long, being down 20-17 is just natural—I win from there all the time."

USA 5—Hong Kong 2.

After this match we feel like winners. Danny and Ming are playing marvelously—and sooner or later, I’m sure, my gutsy Sarajevo veterans, Lee and Pradit (whom I felt very secure with), will, if necessary, win some big ones too. It only remained for me to find out which one to pick for what match. At the back of my mind I had a hunch to use Paul—but Reason said not to, and this wasn’t one of those times I was emotionally ready to take a chance. I wasn’t sure, from Paul’s prolonged inability to practice (at Mt. Airy, at Nagpur), of his playing strength. His head was never better than in his play-acting heroics in the Triangular Match against Gergely and Jonyer, but there at the Y in Nagpur he had nothing to lose, either for himself or his teammates, and, feeling no pressure, could put on that incredible bravura performance. I was also reluctant to use Paul because I didn’t think the other players would approve of such a choice at a time when, if we lost any tie at all, we’d be out of contention. I was afraid that, though they’d have to go along with whomever I’d pick, it might affect their heads, and they might play the worse for it.

Poor Paul. How he wanted to play! As much as, if not more than, anybody on the Team. And I needed his kind of inspired playing—but I didn’t need the downs that might go along with it. In our situation we had to have proven steadiness, experience—or so I thought.

So for our next tie with Greece I chose to partner Danny and Ming with Peter. D-J had just lost two to Hong Kong, and though Peter, with his all-out attacking style, was a notoriously slow starter, I figured, with his unwavering seriousness, he might be due for a repeat of what, in that 1st match at Nagpur, he’d done to Kunz (World #25).

Of course, as we’ll see in a moment, we beat Greece easily. Or did we? One doesn’t have to read "Othello" to be reminded that what seems to be true is often not.

Follow, for instance, Chui on his peregrinations. In between ties, Ming has been haunting the practice room where invariably the Chinese are. In fact, he’s been able to buy from them a piece of a new rubber they have, but not a blade. Now, as we’re waiting to play Greece, he tells me he’s been talking with Li Ching-kuang (I believe it was Li because Ming had also been telling me that Li’d assured him that, if a Seemiller opponent was fast enough, Danny wouldn’t have time during the point to change his racket to whichever side he wanted).

Ming had asked Li how to select a racket. First, Li said, you go through several boxes of paddles to find one that you like. Then you sand it—to remove the excess weight of the paint. Then you look at it to see if it has any wood cracks. At which point you make your first rejection. Then you knock on the bat all around. If it makes a hollow sound anyplace, you reject it. (According to Li, Chui’s bat makes lots of hollow sounds. Except, says Ming, he doesn’t hear what Li does.) Then you take a ball and begin bouncing it on the racket. The ball should stay in one position. (The ball on Chui’s paddle hopped in all directions.) If it does, you’ve got a pretty good racket.

Pity Chui, do you? A 15-3 record in the Team’s he’s going to have—yet holds in his hand an unpicked, unsanded, hollow-sounding racket. And he thought he had the same 6-ply Double Happiness racket that Li Ching-kuang did—which, now that he thinks about it, looks not 6-ply but 4-ply.

Against Greece, Peter started us off again—and lost to their #2, Nicolas Kostopolous. Why do I keep starting our #3 man? Because he plays the 9th match, while Danny plays the 7th. I mean, you want to be around for the 9th match, right? Oh yeah, it makes sense—but not for us. Maybe I should never play Peter first again? Maybe I shouldn’t play him at all? Maybe. Except in his next match with the Greek #1, Constantine Priftis, though it took him 3 games to do it, he won. Then, since Priftis later bested Canada’s #1, Errol Caetano, no wonder Chui had to grapple with him—but take him down he did, deuce in the 3rd. Another gritty win for Ming, defective racket or no. Had Paul played in Peter’s stead, would he have beaten Priftis?

Chinese-coached Nigeria, we knew, would be no pushover. Nigeria, Hong Kong, the Netherlands—these had shaped up as our toughest competition. (For some reason I still didn’t believe Italy was one of the four best teams.) Question was, we had to win the two remaining ties, so who did I play? Seemiller and Chui, of course, but D-J, or Peter—or Paul?

Again I talked it over privately with everybody, and since Peter, after he’d beaten the Greek #1, said he’d like to play in the tougher tie against the Netherlands, and since D-J hadn’t suited up against Greece, I decided I’d give them both the opportunity, so that if we won over first Nigeria and then the Netherlands I’d be in a better position to decide who to play in the climactic crisscross semi’s.

Against Nigeria, D-J began by downing Kasali Lasisi, who would later have Caetano in two-deuce-games trouble. And then both Seemiller and Chui beat Lekan Fenuyi (victor over Pradit in the Singles). However, the #1 Nigerian was Babatunde Obisanya, who two years ago in Sarajevo had defeated Seemiller and Fuarnado Roberts (here in Calcutta one of our biggest supporters), and who this year had gotten to the semi’s of the Commonwealth Games. It was understandable then that Lee could and did lose to him. Still, D-J, after winning the 1st 21-9, almost got home in the 2nd, losing 21-19. But it didn’t matter—we swept by Nigeria 5-1.

Cor du Buy was handing out photos of the Netherlands Team, so you knew they had to be good. An even better clue was that they hadn’t lost a tie and that the most they’d given up to any team was two matches.

Nico Van Slobbe, like Chui, had beaten Hong Kong’s Chan, who would get to the round of 32 in the Singles, so their match was supposed to be close—and it was. But Chui came through, 17 in the 3rd.

Pradit was now 2nd off—opposite Bert Van der Helm, the 8-time Netherlands Champion. And, hooray, he finally won a 1st game, 22-20, and in the 3rd, 21-3, the match. Yes, that’s right, 21-3. Once Peter gets momentum, gets control, he looks kung fu marvelous. True, he lost his last match to Carel Deken—but at 19 in the 3rd. He seemed to be playing much better.

Van der Helm came back from that humiliating last game with Pradit to knock off Chui two straight. But neither Van der Helm nor Von Slobbe, though they played deuce games with Danny, could beat him. USA 5—Netherlands 2.

Fine, we’re in great shape. The Netherlands has a 6-1 record and so do we—but since only two teams are tied, the tie is broken in favor of us because we defeated the Netherlands head to head.

Now comes the crossover tie we’ve been waiting two years for. Australia over in Group B has won out over Poland 5-2, so it’s us against these Polack losers. Yeah, better Poland than Australia. Doug Stewart said he thought the Aussies would beat us.

I’m playing Seemiller and Chui—and Pradit. Maybe I was wrong to do this—and maybe I wasn’t. At any event, I didn’t hear one whisper of complaint from anybody about the choice. And it’s not as if you couldn’t talk to me individually because everybody knew they could and did.

I’ve always had the highest respect for Lee and Pradit both—as fighters, as people. D-J is very practical-minded, is very much of this world. And Peter...well, not that he isn’t practical too—but....I have this soul thing, this mystique, about Peter. I just think he’s capable of being inspired. That is, I hear the breath of the Spirit, to which all aspire, wafting the temple-bells high in his head. I remembered Sarjevo—the semi’s match against Denmark where Peter twice came from far, far back, the first time to lose, the second to win, in that same inspired manner that he beat the Netherlands Champ here 21-3. We needed only one win from Peter, one from Ming, for I felt that Danny would win his three.

As I had in Sarajevo I’d cheered and cheered, match after match, tie after tie, until, shakily, shaking myself, it had come to this—against Poland, a team we’d beaten 5-2 at the last World’s.

Pradit opened for us (a positioning mistake?). His opponent, Zbigniew Fraczyk, whom we’d not played against at the last World’s, was supposedly their #5, so why put him up when Marek Skibinski, their #3, will prove capable in the Singles of giving England’s Trevor Taylor, the Commonwealth Champion, a 5-game match? Why, indeed. Fraczyk played like he was the Poland #1—and Peter was cold, dead. Of course the Polish guy wasn’t lucky, he later beat Caetano and N. V. Ashok, the Indian who’d take out Raphel 3-zip.

The next Pole was also a Fraczyk—Stanislaw (their #1)—who had a gimpy leg. In Sarajevo Danny had just eased by him, 19, 20—here he coasted to a win.

Against their #2, Witold Woznica, Chui won the 1st, but, oh, dropped the next two. We didn’t know it yet, but Woznica and Zbigniew Fraczyk would make a damn good doubles team. Who’d expect them here in sweltering India to ice the top North Korean pair, then almost deep freeze the soon-to-be World Champions Jonyer and Gergely?

Seemiller stopped this Zbigniew, 2-0. But Pradit again, this time against Woznica, couldn’t take a game. It didn’t make me feel any better that at Sarajevo D-J had -23, -16 struggled and lost to him.

And now a very big match—Chui vs. the tall Polish player with the bad leg. In the 1st, Ming’s got him 20-17—but then he and Fraczyk play an incredible superstar point, which Fraczyk wins and stays in the game with. Now the Pole continues with his slow loop play to Chui’s forehand and Ming doesn’t know what to do with the ball. He ends up losing this game, and ("I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have used so much wood") the match, 19 in the 3rd. It’s such a killer I feel I’ve taken a bullet. Roberts is nice, tries to comfort me.

Poland 4—USA 2.

But again Seemiller prevails—holds 24-22, 22-20 strong against Woznica. Disheartened but desperate, he keeps us alive. In Sarajevo, in Swaythling Cup play, Danny was 10-10. Here he’s 18-1!

And now Chui 11, 9 unravels Zbigniew—frazzles this Fraczyk.

But the other one, limping into the court—well, don’t believe in his case lameness symbolizes any defect of the Spirit.

So—Poland 4-USA 4—and it’s all up to Pradit. But where is Peter?

On several occasions I’d shown my nervousness to him over Lee’s habit of appearing late for a match. I was sure D-J knew what he was doing, but it always scared me. I didn’t want any team trying to claim a default win. Peter had assured me that he’d never be late like that. But as Chui had just about finished routing Zbigniew, Peter was not in sight. With the tie 4-4, I didn’t want to have any possible ring-down-the-Iron-Curtain incident, so I went looking for him in the side dressing rooms adjacent to the playing area.

From the corridor, through a half-opened door I saw him. He had his back to me and was...kneeling. I thought for a moment he was stretching, or maybe assuming some yoga position. And then I realized...he was praying. Since I’d found him I was relieved. I didn’t want to embarrass him or put any more pressure on him. So, without acknowledging that I’d seen him, I let him be...and went back to see if Chui’s match had been completed.

Very soon it was—and Peter had still not arrived. So, after I’d waited a few more minutes, I knew I had to go get him. My god, was the burden so great that he didn’t want to come to the table? Again, through the half-opened door I saw him. He had his back to me and was apparently practicing his stroke—for he was looking into a mirror. I called to him, and we shook hands and I urged him to win this one...for me—I had tears in my eyes.

There is no one else to do what Peter has to do. He is just not playing well and knows it. He has no confidence—nor, at the moment, can he get it. I have done my best. He has done his best. It is just not good enough. He comes off the table, having lost two straight, having never been in the match. I shake his hand, go over to the wall, and vomit great sobs.