With Chang, gang is almost all here
Michael Chang, the Small Wall of China, has never visited the tennis Valhalla (a.k.a. the International Hall of Fame) in Newport, R.I. But once he steps onto the world's oldest court within The Casino, Chang will realize he can never leave.
He is there forever, in spirit anyway, the lone living member of the Hall's Class of 2008 to be inducted tomorrow during the semifinals of the men's pro tournament, the Jimmy Van Alen Cup, sponsored by Campbell's. Chang is the only one to enter as a player, accompanied by contributors Eugene Scott and Mark McCormack.
Scott, an extraordinary man of many talents, was a good enough player to make the semifinals of the US Championships in 1967. However, there was much more as he advanced the game in several directions as a promoter, founding Tennis Week magazine, where his ringing editorials set him forth as the conscience of the game.
McCormack, one of the first agents, was an astute marketer. His firm, International Management Group, was influential everywhere, broadening the tennis reach into television.
"That little guy, Michael, inspired the rest of us," says lodge brother Pete Sampras. "He was the first to win a big one, and we thought if he can do it, so can we."
Those "we" were the guys who became the finest US male crop ever: Sampras, Chang, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Todd Martin, and MaliVai Washington. Sampras and Courier beat Chang to Newport; Agassi should be there with the Class of '11.
"It was a fairy tale," says Chang, who didn't believe in such until Paris '89, when he became the first American male in 34 years to win the French Open. Parisian clay, quicksand for Yanks for so long, gave way to him, along with the highly favored three-time champ, No. 1 Ivan Lendl.
Raised in Southern California, Chang had almost zero clay-court experience -- "and no expectations of winning the title" - a 17-year-old kid towered over by the imperious Lendl in their fourth-rounder. In fact, Chang, two sets behind, was cramping so badly, he couldn't risk sitting down on the changeovers. His chances looked empty, but he was filled with hope and grit, and he wouldn't stop running and retrieving until he tipped Lendl, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3, in 4 hours 39 minutes. In the semis, he outdueled a clay-court native, Soviet Andrei Chesnokov, then outlasted another Famer, Swede Stefan Edberg, by saving a pile of break points, 6-1, 3-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2. Thus the boy was the youngest to bag a men's major.
Perpetual motion personified, making few mistakes, swift 5-foot-9-inch Chang was a finalist in three other majors: 1995 French to Thomas Muster; 1996 Australian to Boris Becker; 1996 US to Sampras. He won 34 singles titles, among them the 1998 US Pro at Longwood, and 662 matches, batting .680. He inhabited the top 10 seven times, No. 2 in 1996, No. 3 the following year.
An appealing figure, he had crowds with him most of the way in 17 years. But not during two damp, chilly 1990 afternoons in Vienna, when he pulled his back-from-the-bottom act again on behalf of the US. With 18,000 horn-blowing Austrians cheering against him, Chang registered one of the greatest US Davis Cup victories.
Locked at 2-2 in a semifinal, the US seemed out of it as Chang lost the first two sets to Horst Skoff. "I didn't expect to play," Chang recalls. "We figured Andre [Agassi] would clinch in the fourth match by beating Muster. Didn't happen."
Trapped, he managed to win the third set before darkness intervened.
Maybe he could credit Alexander Graham Bell with the decisive triumph. Having watched the match on TV at home in California, brother Carl Chang, his coach, phoned Michael, calming him and outlining the winning strategy. That 3-6, 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 result made Michael merely the second American to win the decisive fifth match from two sets down. The other was Don Budge over Germany's Gottfried von Cramm in the 1937 semis.
Chang then won a first-day singles over Darren Cahill as the US terminated an eight-year Cup drought by defeating Australia in the finale.
Fortunately for Chang and the US, his grandparents escaped China in the 1949 exodus to Taiwan. His parents made their way to the States, where Mama Betty thought she, Papa Joe, Carl, and Michael could have some fun hitting tennis balls.
But it wasn't much fun for opponents who tried to hit balls through the Small Wall of China's defense.
