Leander Paes is now the "successfullest" Davis Cup doubles player in history. Hooray! In a testimony to his endurance and appetite for the team competition, Paes went past Italian Nicola Pietrangeli in doubles wins, 43 to 42 in Tianjin on Saturday partnering Rohan Bopanna for a win that sparked India's turnaround from 0-2 down versus China. Pietrangeli remains the Cup's most successful player ever with a win loss/record or 120-44 (78-32 singles, 42-12 doubles). Paes is No. 5 on that list at 90-35 (48-22 singles, 43-13 doubles). Should the ITF decide to change the Davis Cup format next year, those records -- it can safely be said -- will not be broken.
In claiming the doubles record, Paes, 44, has stepped into some mighty fine Italian shoes. Pietrangeli played his last professional match in 1973 at the age of 40, his country's greatest player, winner of two French Open singles titles and non-playing captain of the team that won Italy's first-ever Davis Cup title. It is in the Davis Cup, almost three decades ago, where Paes' own legend was born and where it will stay strongest. He was 16 on his 1990 debut in a doubles match versus Japan as partner to Zeeshan Ali. The match ended an 18-16 fifth-set victory and sealed the tie 3-0 for India. Three months later, Paes won junior Wimbledon and became a very different kind of pro out of India.
Not the tallest of men, Paes was a Scissorhands at the net, with the legs of a cheetah and a rocket engine for a heart. With an inexhaustible love for a scrap. After Ramesh Krishnan's retirement post-1993, Paes became Mr Davis Cup for India, two singles and a doubles on his job list. In most ties at home, he was two-point guarantee (with Mahesh Bhupathi in doubles) and the third was always a 50-50 shot. In a defeat to South Africa in 1994, Paes won both his singles (defeating Grant Stafford and Wayne Ferreira), all three points against Croatia in 1995 (beating Sasa Hirszon and Goran Ivanisevic in singles) and in 1996 match versus Netherlands, helped India come from 0-2 down: Bhupathi-Paes first defeated Jacco Eltingh & Paul Haarhuis, Paes making it 2-2 beating Jan Simerink with Bhupathi winning the decider over Eltingh.
In those kind of Davis Cup ties at home where India could survive the tie only if he won, never mind against whom, at the end of the heat and the dust of a contest, inevitably it was Paes who would be left standing. Or rather charging around, in a state of maniacal frenzy, beating his chest and hollering at Indian crowds as if his tonsils were being pulled out without painkillers. He waved the tricolour before it turned into trite, macho Flag Waving, spoke eloquently and passionately about the pride of playing for India and unashamedly shed public tears.
Of course, we could see his was a rudimentary on-court game, assembled on the back of speed and smarts, a knowledge of angles, an understanding of his limitations and, not least, a sense of occasion and theatrics. It is what kept him moving ahead and steered him towards his career milestones. Like the barrier-breaker 1996 Olympic medal, the first by an individual Indian athlete in 44 years and victory on the pro tour over the then-world No.1 Pete Sampras.
On that day in New Haven, it was obvious that Sampras was off his game and Paes played every card he had. Except that which the Indians were so familiar with -- the emotional one. He racked up points, pouncing on the Sampras second serve with returns grooved. "I crossed over from one side of the court to the other with my head down. No noise, no celebration, no fist-pumping, nothing," he later said. No giving Sampras any aggravation or getting him riled and having him raise his game and bomb-serve his way out of the match. After an hour and 14 minutes, Paes won 6-3, 6-4, walked up to the net, respectfully shook hands and got the hell off court. He followed up this story, with his familiar gleeful Lee-giggle. Paes' ATP page will always show a 100% head-to-head singles record against Sampras.
As a singles player, Paes took his game as far as he could have gone with it -- an Olympic medal and a top 100 ranking. At his prime, as an entertainer, on court in the Davis Cup and ATP doubles, Paes was 100% value for money. It came with the whole shebang, the Paes repertoire: Point muffed, head dropped. Point won, chest bump. Flashy forehand gone long, face raised, crinkled frown visible, head shaking. Lucky net cord, bright grin, shoulders shaking with laughter. Tough victory, chin jutting out, palm raised to the crowd. Always the showman who tries to ensure that his emotions are visible even to the people in most distant corner of the cheap seats in Row Z. All in and around court, all good. Stoicism never made for good TV.
It was the off-court stuff that became more and more out of sync with the pure blood competitor we had first seen. Indian tennis turned into a repetitive, formulaic soap opera of tawdry dramas, leaked information, patriotic pleas, on loop before or after a Davis Cup tie and/or Olympic Games. Every time, with Paes & some Partner slap bang in the middle.
Of his 43 Davis Cup doubles wins, he has a 25-2 win-loss stat with Bhupathi, the pair No. 4 on the all-time list. No other successful doubles pair in history -- not McEnroe-Fleming, not the Woodys, not the Black brothers, not Forget-Leconte -- have matched Bhupathi-Paes in their 24-match winning streak in Davis Cup ties. Yet there is discord in Paes' doubles record outside the Davis Cup and his record Grand Slam doubles titles. He has partnered more than 110 players on the ATP tour during the course of a 27-year-pro career. That's around four partners a year or one every three months -- which makes for a complete clash with the team-man temperament required by doubles tennis.
A few years ago, when chatting about the sport, my friend tennis writer Prajwal Hegde made an observation of such instinctive clarity that it has stayed with me. Regardless of all his doubles success, she thought, maybe Paes fundamentally remained a singles player at heart. In the Davis Cup, his technical limitations -- in serve and returning versatility -- were compensated by the other alpha male trappings that the format fuelled, and perhaps kept him stoked. The large entourage, the blood and guts drama of the now-or-never matches that Davis Cup could become, featuring him as Main Man, the centre of attention for so long.
For almost a decade from 1993 onwards, Paes had formed the metal core of India's Davis Cup team, despite his spats and squabbles with Bhupathi or anyone else. His singles game could only have operated with a diamond sharpness, which gets automatically eroded with age. In his doubles heyday, he could "carry" a doubles team singlehanded but as players get older, the doubles load must be shared. That, though, happens intuitively only in teams that are in for the long haul, not by ships crossing infrequent paths. As he became Paes the Elder of the tennis tour, the doubles billing up in lights began to read India's Davis Cup Champ plus someone else to make up numbers.
The Pietrangeli record matters to Paes as it is a recognition of his longevity in Indian tennis and pulls the spotlight on him again. Nationalist brand-builders will mark it as a notch on India's athletic belt. For those of us who saw the teenager with the gigawatt smile first step onto court, we know in our gut that a foreboding winter is upon us and the lion that Leander once was is trapped deep in its icy centre.