FAREWELL TO THE HOLY GRAIL thank you for the translation Stefi

*accompanying pictures*

88-61-93. These are not Pat Rafter’s measures (size, that is), especially the first two. Instead, these are Lara Feltham’s, charming model that would be a dream for any man. Rafter included, with the slight difference that for him this is not a dream. Placing her on top of a virtual ranking of the preferences in every day life would be logic, if not just wise. No: Patrick, yet never denying her the right and proper affection, for now has always preferred a more ancient passion, born when he was still a little kid and installed a rudimental lightning system on the court that his father managed to build in Queensland, a few steps from the austral barrier reef (is that the right word?). Wimbledon, tennis’ Holy Grail, had a privileged role in this context: it was in fact the only reason why Pat could get a sleepless night when he was in school. To admire the final, that is. But from 2 years on, Pat didn’t need sleepless nights to enjoy it; he’s lived it as the protagonist, though loser. But if in the 2000 final, the advantage on Pete Sampras (1 set up and 4-1 in the tie-break of the second) appeared as a miracle, the match lost against Ivanisevic cries out for vengeance.
The crazy Croat seemed to have resigned himself at the end of the 4^th set, tired and furious with an opponent that plunged to the net with the freshness of someone who had just started the match.

Then, in his good manners, Rafter seemed like not wanting to ruin the Croat fairy tale.

However, a success of the Aussie wouldn’t have made us less happy: he’s a model of true fair play. Rafter excites us because he’s not a predestined. At 4 he didn’t play with Connors and Borg like Andre Agassi; Don King has never visited him before he was 10, like the Williams sisters; at 17 he wasn’t winning Wimbledon or Roland Garros like Boris Becker, Mats Wilander or Pat Cash and at 18 he wasn’t even junior world champion like Claudio Pistolesi and Andrea Gaudenzi (Italian players. No comment on that *lol*). And he had to win the Us Open twice to show John McEnroe he wasn’t a "one slam wonder". He missed the cream on the strawberries, a success at Wimbledon that escaped as killer instinct isn’t typical of polite guys. It’s more typical of Croat DNA.
It makes us sad to hear that maybe there won’t be any other chance. At the end of the year Pat is going to take a 6-month holiday from tennis. "I’ll be back only if I really miss it". While he’ll be waiting to know, he will probably marry Lara Feltham. There are more melancholic ways to face a farewell.

Sorry to see you go, mate 
Pat Rafter has mixed dignity and humour in a stirring career that endeared him to a nation. Now he must decide if the US Open is his last grand slam tournament. Gerard Wright reports. 

Early next year, perhaps during the second week of the Australian Open, or when the Davis Cup squad gathers in February for its first-round tie, Pat Rafter will pause from whatever he is doing and take stock of his emotions.

The question he will ask himself is: "Do I miss it?"

Depending on Australia's fortunes next month in the Davis Cup semi-final against Sweden in Sydney, he will be either two or four months into a promised six-month break from the game.

Whether that break becomes a permanent retirement is a question even Rafter cannot answer, as he prepares for what might well be his last grand slam, the US Open, which starts in New York early on Tuesday morning, Australian time.


From a competitive standpoint, the irony is he is even contemplating getting out of the game. The majority of Rafter's success - two US Open titles, two Wimbledon finals, nine other tournament victories for $20 million in prizemoney - has come in the second half of his 11-year professional career. Through the first three weeks of August, he was as hot as he has ever been.

Including his epic five-set Wimbledon defeat by Goran Ivanisevic, Rafter has reached four finals in a row, for one victory, in Indianapolis. With No1 seed Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil, he is the form player of the American summer hardcourt circuit.

"I think I've developed even more this year than other years," Rafter said after reaching the final at Cincinnati. "My game's getting better. My ground strokes are getting better and I think my game is as good as it's ever been."

It will have to be if he is to advance even as far as the semi-finals in New York, with Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras in his path.

There is a host of ways to consider Rafter's imminent departure. Sampras is as good an argument as any for a permanent goodbye.

Ads for the US Open suggest Sampras can remove the qualifier from his description as "arguably the greatest player" over the next two weeks. That would seem unlikely. The competitive mystique and bulletproof aura that once so intimidated younger opponents has been pierced. The holder of more grand slam titles than anyone else has gone from immortal to cannon fodder in 15 months.

It has been painful to watch but useful to learn from. Rafter would ask himself if that is to be the mode of his departure from the game. The answer, most likely, would be no.

Only one other player of Rafter's competitive stature has taken such a sabbatical and returned. That player was John McEnroe. In the 1980s, McEnroe took leave of absence to attend to a volatile marriage and a growing family. He returned within 12 months but did not win another grand slam tournament. He was still the same sublime, tormented player of before, except now he was beatable.

Agassi was there-but-not-there for the best part of 1996-97 as he tried to salvage his marriage to actress Brooke Shields but never disappeared for any length of time. Boris Becker announced his retirement at Wimbledon in 1995 and returned to play two years later but that was always more of a lap of honour than a final do-or-die charge through the All England Club.

Rafter's brother and manager, Stephen, believes the lure of centre court will work this time as well.

"My gut feeling is, no, that's not his last one," he said. "I think there's unfinished business at Wimbledon, and that's going to spur him on."

But with his next answer, Stephen Rafter recalled his brother's rehab and return from surgery to wrist and shoulder, as well as other injuries, and the toll that effort took.

"It's just the grind he has endured for a while, to recover from injury," he said. "That recovery process has been constant hard work, to maintain his body."

Sandon Stolle, a US Open doubles champion, saw this for himself during the week before Christmas last year.

Stolle and Rafter trained together on the court attached to Tony Roche's home at Turramurra. Stolle found himself exhausted by the four-hour morning workouts Roche had devised. Beyond that, he marvelled at both Rafter's athleticism, and his capacity to push himself through such a preparation.

Three weeks later, at a press conference to mark the start of the Colonial Classic exhibition event in Melbourne, Rafter sounded like someone newly returned from holidays who had considered the prospect of the year's work ahead, and didn't like it.

This was when he first spoke of retirement.

Since then, his reasons for wanting to get away from the game have crystallised.

"This has been my 12th year, this year, travelling," Rafter said after a match in Montreal recently. "And it's very tiring, very boring."

Stephen Rafter complained the only way his family knew what their son and brother was thinking was to read the papers.

This was Pat, thinking aloud, on his way to trying to explain himself: "You're going to miss the competition more than anything. But sometimes, you don't want to compete. You wake up, some days are pretty ordinary now, as well.

"I feel I've gone out on the court sometimes and just put in some ordinary performances. Sometimes you don't want to deal with people expecting you to win all the time, and sort of getting down on you. And I just don't really need that, right now."

A week later, the choice had become clearer. Did Pat Rafter, the junior who kept his eyes on the prize, rather than the matches leading up to them in tournaments across Queensland, want to keep playing for the adrenaline rush of big games and close escapes, or stop for the peace and quiet of his own life?

"That's the question. Will I miss the competition and miss that feeling of getting into tough situations and feeling the rush? It's really hard to say," he said.

"But I really hope I can find something else in my life that can give me a really good fulfilment and enjoyment. 

"I'd love to walk away, I really would. But if this is where I'm supposed to be, this is where I'm supposed to be."

The decisive factor may be Rafter's great love, the Davis Cup. If Australia defeat Sweden in the Sydney semi-final, the team will play the winner of France-Netherlands in the final in Melbourne in December. In all likelihood, Rafter would count an Australian victory there as the crowning achievement of his career, and make the goodbye a permanent one.

There will always be players with bigger serves, more grand slam titles, bigger endorsement deals. But no-one who made tennis quite the adventure Rafter did.

No-one else brought out the absolute best in Agassi on the world's biggest stages. No-one else could combine athletic flair, hair-trigger reflexes and unyielding tenacity with the capacity for Saturday afternoon matinee-style escapes that were part of many of Rafter's five-set matches.

Where many of his contemporaries swaggered or sulked, Rafter was able to combine decorum and humour. With the players with whom he felt any sort of affinity, from Tim Henman to Jonas Bjorkman to Lleyton Hewitt, a match could be at once an all-out battle, overlaid with a sense of camaraderie.

An American colleague watched and listened to Rafter and was reminded of Canadian hockey players in the National Hockey League - unjaded, heads straight, barely able to believe their good fortune that they were being paid and feted to play a game they loved.

"He just played the game with dignity," Stephen Rafter said. "He always put in his best effort, no matter what. There's never been a match where he's tanked it. It's pretty rare that that type of attitude is out there."

In a pure sporting sense, Rafter did for tennis what Shane Warne did for cricket. Both took an ancient and supposedly extinct style of play, energetically revived it, and achieved enormous success.

A wider audience than either sport had once enjoyed fell in love with serve-and-volley tennis and leg-spin bowling, two distinctive styles given new life in ever more homogenised sports.

For Rafter, only one challenge remains. It is the most difficult of all and it is not the US Open, the Davis Cup or even Wimbledon.

It is the art of the graceful, permanent exit.
The Sun-Herald 

Rafter Sr is ace of dads

25aug01
IF PAT Rafter was gallant in Wimbledon defeat, his father showed similar humility after yesterday being named Australia's Father of the Year.

Jim Rafter accepted the award in Sydney with the same down-to-earth charisma that has earned his tennis star son respect.

Mr Rafter and his wife of 40 years, Jocelyn, raised six boys and three girls in Queensland.

"I am very humbled," he said.

"I see the remarkable people standing here in previous years and you have really got an ordinary bloke this time. I didn't know much about Father of the Year, quite frankly, and I asked one of my kids, 'Do you know anything about this?'

"He said, 'Well I think at least the last couple of fathers have been Kamahl and Slim Dusty'.

"And I said, 'God, they are going to ask me to sing'. I am pleased that didn't happen."

The Father of the Year award scheme has been run every year in NSW since 1957, but this is the first time it has been presented as a national award.

Pat's 'unfinished business'

By JOHN THIRSK
26aug01

PATRICK RAFTER, going for his third US Open this week, will return to championship tennis next year.

That is certain and the reason is simple -- he cannot leave his Wimbledon story unfinished.

Tennis great John Newcombe, who once described Rafter's game as a "war of attrition", says the popular Queenslander will take a break after the Davis Cup final in December and not play the Australian Open the following month.

According to Newcombe, the number one priority for Rafter is getting his name on the Wimbledon and Davis Cup trophies.

"But Patrick will be back for Wimbledon and the US Open," Newcombe forecast in what he called a gut feeling.

"He has come so close to getting his name on the Wimbledon trophy and as a result has unfinished business there.

"I would hate for him to be 40 years of age and look back and say `I should have given Wimbledon another go'. I think he will have a four-month campaign centred around Wimbledon and the US Open next year.

"I hope he does it because I know it will be the right decision.

"Right now, Patrick is at the absolute peak of his game and knows he is capable of matching or beating anyone on his day on any surface. This is the stage he would have reached at the end of 1999, but his career has been a stop-start one through his arm and shoulder problems.

"Though Patrick is 28, he really is only 26 because he has lost two years through injury."

Newcombe was also quick to downplay suggestions that Rafter had lost that winning feeling after reaching four successive finals in nine weeks for three losses and one win, when his opponent Gustavo Kuerten retired hurt.

"It wasn't long ago that we (Australians) were screaming that our guys couldn't make a final," Newcombe said. "Now Patrick's done it four times in a row for the second time in his career (the other occasion was 1997), and that's a hell of an effort.

"He hasn't lost it (winning) -- how did you think he made all those finals?

"Ninety nine per cent of the players would have killed to make a final, let alone four in succession and be in a position in which Patrick was.

"It's a positive sign in his build-up for a third US Open title. His run-up to the US Open could not have been better and he did the right thing taking a break from Long Island this week."

Kuerten is Newcombe's favourite for the US Open, while defending champion Marat Safin, whose form is improving, is his danger man.

"I think Patrick has the toughest draw in the tournament, having to beat Pete Sampras (round of 16) and then Andre Agassi just to make the semi-final," he said.

Let's treasure Rafter while we still can
By Patrick Smith
25aug01

THE US Open starting on Monday will be Patrick Rafter's final grand slam. The tennis champion has been trying to tell us that all year but we haven't believed him. Not wanted to anyway. He's just 28, has rarely played better, he's making a fortune. He's even cut his hair. Why would you believe him?

But we must. After the Masters Cup and his Davis Cup obligations are done with, Rafter will take a break that he hopes never ends. He is exhausted. Tired in the brain, tired in the body.
Rafter, the US Open sixth seed, pulled out of the final lead-up tournament, the Hamlet Cup, because his right arm was sore. Bloody tired. But he will give this tournament his high backhand volley, his best shot.

His retirement will be a significant loss not just to tennis but Australian sport. In tennis, it is self-explanatory. Apart from Little Lleyton Hewitt there is no-one else. Mark Philippoussis has not played a grand slam this year. He must start again. The fear is real that the world may have top-spun past him by the time his knee is wonky-free.

No-one is following Hewitt's shuffling but determined footsteps. Every sport boasts about its tyros. Australian tennis holds its tongue because experience has told the community our tyros don't hit enough winners, they just hit brick walls.

Hewitt is just 20 and the exception. It is very young to be the saviour of your sport. He puts enough pressure on himself to succeed that he is volcanic and, at times, vulgar. He may die precocious.

To understand pressure, Hewitt should wait until the nation jumps on his shoulders alone. Apres Patrick. Hewitt may also be done by 28. No, tennis is in trouble without Rafter.

But the broader sporting community is hardly immune. Across a lot of disciplines Australia has lost leaders. Rafter's exit will seal a watershed. Basketball has lost Andrew Gaze and Michele Timms, athletics Steve Moneghetti, swimming Kieren Perkins and Susan O'Neill, golf is learning to live with Greg Norman on a part-time basis only. Cricket is fortunate Steve Waugh has led with such authority and strength after Mark Taylor took block behind the mike.

Sport is thus vulnerable. Moneghetti, Gaze and Timms proved sport and integrity are not mutually exclusive. So, when their turn came, did Perkins and O'Reilly. They competed fiercely and uncompromisingly but rarely, if ever, at the expense of their opponents' dignity. Norman can be crabby and, at times, too forthright, but when fate and his own frailties conspired to deny and even embarrass him he was at his most gracious.

They have stood out. Asked to pick examples of what best represents Australian sport they are the names that would head the finalists. Cathy Freeman would be there. Waugh and Adam Gilchrist, too.

And in every way it is Rafter who defines Australian sport: whatever the lack of raw talent, it is puttied solid by courage, there is humour, there is respect for the opposition, there is a humility. But Rafter could be gone in just three sets; Gaze, Monners, Timms and the others have quit. There is a vacuum and sport is vulnerable. The likes of Ian Thorpe and Hewitt have been set a task. Australian international sport does not have a layer of leadership so much as a crust. So Rafter may not think his exit is premature but it threatens to be.

A gem, he needs to be treasured.

The Australian could yet win his third US Open title. That would be a fitting signature on a career that took time to find its feet. Whatever, he will end among the Australian tennis elite: twice a finalist at Wimbledon, semi-finalist at both the French and Australian Opens, grand slam excellence.

He is ranked by some as second favourite here behind Andre Agassi. No-one is in better form. From Wimbledon to Indianapolis last week, where he won, Rafter has been in four finals in a row. It fits the pattern that preceded his previous US Open wins. Form builds to a crescendo on the fast hard-court here.

The draw on Wednesday was cruel. Agassi and Pete Sampras sit in wait. He must do away with both to reach the semi-finals. It is a challenge but it will be his body that turns to water before his mind.

Perhaps it is in his decision to quit that we understand why Rafter was such a tenacious competitor. It takes a rare strength of mind to set in place a retirement plan, acknowledge the reasons why you have become tired and worn out – yet work as furiously as you always have.

Rafter has been resilient in the most disappointing loss of his career. He was never convinced he could take Wimbledon from Sampras but Goran Ivanisevic was another matter. He has regrouped from that loss better than he did the one to Sampras.

Sport says that you discover a competitor's soul in defeat. If Rafter wins here, we will learn even more about him in victory.

Rafter cast in bronze

A cross between Roy Emerson and Frank Sedgman - that's our Pat, according to the experts. Richard Hinds reports.

If this US Open is to be the last instalment in Pat Rafter's grand slam portfolio - and that seems a distinct possibility - then the time has come to put him behind glass. However, assigning Rafter's place in the hall of fame is not an easy task.

Even allowing for the usual difficulties of comparing players from different eras - racquets, surfaces, amateurism/professionalism, the relative strength of fields - Rafter's career has been unusual.

In an era when the best players go straight from cradle to the practice court, Rafter is a late bloomer. He did not reach the semi-final of a grand slam tournament (the 1997 French Open) until he was 24, a time when many are suffering the early symptoms of burn-out.

At 24, Boris Becker had won five grand slams and been runner-up in three others. Although Becker's record is vastly superior to Rafter's, the German was to win only one more major title in the next six years.

On the other hand, one of Rafter's major strengths has been his constant improvement. With consecutive US Open titles in 1997-98 and, subsequently, some more modest achievements, he has snuck up on greatness by belatedly compiling a record inferior to only the two truly-great players of his era - Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi.

Gustavo Kuerten and Yevgeny Kafelnikov have, like Rafter, won two grand slam finals in the past six years. But Rafter's mastery of other surfaces - including two Wimbledon finals - gives him the bronze medal behind Sampras and Agassi.

"I'm probably biased but I would say he is clearly the third best player of recent times," said Davis Cup selector Alan Stone. "He's not a great clay-courter but he did make a French Open semi-final, he won two US Opens, reached two Wimbledon finals and an Australian Open semi-final."

Another victory at Flushing Meadows would make that assertion indisputable. However, like Greg Norman winning a third British Open, it would probably not greatly enhance Rafter's place in tennis history. Norman needed to win at Augusta, just as Rafter needed a Wimbledon title to come even close to joining the company of the game's greats.

As for his place in Australian tennis history, former Davis Cup captain Neale Fraser is reluctant to compare eras. However, he has no hesitancy in placing Rafter in the company of the best Australians.

"The first player that comes to mind is Roy Emerson," said Fraser, when asked to compare Rafter with a former great. "Very quick, a great hustler at the net and always creating errors."

John Alexander sees more of the great Frank Sedgman. "They both have similar games but also similar personalities. They've been beloved by the crowds as much for the way they play as what they achieved."

Stone was slightly more conservative. "You couldn't put him up there in the [Rod] Laver, [Lew] Hoad, [Ken] Rosewall class on results but also I think he's not as good a player as those guys were," he said. "But he certainly deserves to be in the next group amongst some very good ones."

From his court-side armchair, Fraser had a unique view of the players of the post-[John] Newcombe era - the time in which the world caught up and Australian performance came to be measured by competency and occasional glory rather than global domination.

In Fraser's mind, the best Australian player of that time is clearly a two-way debate between the Pats - Cash and Rafter - the only Australian men to win a grand slam title in the past 26 years. "They were slightly different styles of players, both serve-volleyers, but Cash was a bit quicker and a better return of serve," said Fraser. "Pat [Rafter] has a very good volley, though. I would put them on a par."

Alexander suggested Rafter's week-in week-out consistency was far superior to that of Cash who won only a handful of titles. "Rafter has been in four finals in four weeks. That makes him just about the best player in the world right now for sheer consistency," Alexander said.

Stone said Rafter's grand slam results also made him the best Australian player since Newcombe (Cash won Wimbledon, lost two Australian Open finals in five sets and made a US Open semi-final.)

"Cashy was injury-prone and I think he certainly could have won more than one grand slam," he said. "But you would have to say Pat [Rafter] has done a bit more."

How much more Rafter will do is likely to be the source of constant speculation over the next week or two. Fraser is willing to bet he will be back at Wimbledon next year. If he is not, you will soon find him behind glass; prominent and not out of place.

Rafter, Hewitt set for Sydney

By PATRICK MILES

21 August 01

The Australian

THE organisers of Sydney's Tennis Masters Cup are salivating at the prospect of two Australians in the eight-man field for the climax to the season in November.

There is every chance that Pat Rafter and Lleyton Hewitt will finish the regular season in the top eight of the ATP Champions Race, thereby qualifying for the $US3.7 million event at the 17,800-seat SuperDome.

Rafter, who won his first title for more than a year at the RCA Championships in Indianapolis at the weekend, is fourth in the standings, just 10 points behind Spain's Juan Carlos Ferrero.

Hewitt, who has won three tournaments so far this year, is in fourth place, 92 points behind his Davis Cup team-mate, and there is a considerable gap to the sixth-placed Frenchman, Sebastien Grosjean.

At the head of the order, Brazil's Gustavo Kuerten, the injured runner-up to Rafter in Indianapolis, and Andre Agassi, of the US, have already earned enough points to make the Masters, on November 12-18.

With three major events to play before the season's Sydney finale, Rafter and Hewitt require only a few more victories to ensure a place.

Form suggests they can do well at the US Open, which begins in less than a week, then the two remaining Tennis Masters Series events in Stuttgart and Paris.

Rafter won his two grand slam titles in New York, where Hewitt reached the semi-finals last year.

And the 20-year-old South Australian recorded his best TMS result in Stuttgart, losing the final last year to veteran Wayne Ferreira.

There are 400 points up for grabs in New York, Stuttgart and Paris, allowing the race for Sydney to be fought out until November.

Rafter, who benefited from an injury to Kuerten in Sunday's final, has made the Masters a priority in what could be his last season on the tour.

"It is definitely one of my goals this year, to try to make it and play in Sydney," Rafter said. "But it is tough because there are probably 15 guys out there who are capable of making it up to three weeks before."

One of those guys is Croatia's Goran Ivanisevic, who beat Rafter in last month's thrilling Wimbledon final, the first of four championship matches in succession for the 28-year-old Queenslander.

His hollow victory over Kuerten, who was forced to retire hurt trailing 4-2 in the first set, broke a losing sequence of three for Rafter, who lost the finals in Montreal and Cincinnati after his disappointment at Wimbledon.

But it was a rib not an ankle that provided him with the 11th title of his career. After losing three finals in a row, Rafter said he might have to reply on someone spraining an ankle to bring him ultimate success.

In the event, it was a painful rib injury that led to the downfall of Kuerten, who had beaten Rafter the previous week.

"I hope I didn't put a jinx on him," Rafter said.

The French Open champion had to play twice in one day after his semi-final against Ivanisevic was postponed due to rain. Kuerten overcame the Croat in three sets but his body failed him in the final.