[Vera]

As mentioned, I've just gotten my Davis Cup 2000 year book. Very exciting. I was gonna post some quote on Hackie's DC 2000 tape thread. But, what the hack, this deserves a new thread . I wish I have a scanner to put some pics in but I don't, sorry. This is the next best thing to the DC tape. I don't have the DC tape yet so in the mean time, I'm satisfied with the book.

What I want is to do some quotes here to share. I think most of us are very familiar with Spain's road to the Davis Cup 2000. So I'll focus on those parts that I've never read before anywhere else. The book is written by an English journalist, so no bias . I think some of you have the book too, so feel free to join in and do the same thing.

 

[Chloe le Bopper]

Oohhh - I was going to order this book!

Chapters here only has 1998, 1999, and 2001

So i would have had to order from Amazon.

I still will when I can afford it. Do share

 

[Leo7]

awesome Vera. how exciting! and i'd love to read some quotes! D

 

[Vera]

This is the part I like the most, bcos...well, it's pretty obvious, let's read:

This paragraph is from the chapter on the Final, it's before Rafter and JC's match:

-From an hour into Hewitt's match, Rafter had been trying to get his head around the task ahead of him in what might be the last chance he had to get his name inscribed on the old punch bowl. Every time Hewitt fell behind, his heart deflated. Then came his teammate's ultimate glory and Rafter was elated. It was a lot for body and soul to take.

The same, if not more, had to be true of Ferrero, a twenty-year-old of inordinate skills who had dazzled in reaching the semifinal of Roland Garros in May. But this? This was something else. "I am very calm," he said on the day before the Final. "Do not worry about me, I will be fine." One had to admire his sangfroid.-

 

[Leo7]

oh i love it, Vera! this book sounds terrific. you say there are pictures also? then i need to get myself a copy i think.. and of course the tape also

 

[Vera]

Hi you guys

Lots of typing coming but I'm glad you guys are excited about it too. This book is really about character of the players involved in the Davis Cup, I think. This is what I like about it. It's not just a description of the event.

Becca, I ordered from Amazon.ca, the price is a lot lower than in Amazon.com, at least right now. But while you can't buy it now, I'll try to post as much as possible. And even if you know all the stories, it's worth keeping.

 

[Vera]

Also like this one very much. This is JC at his debut in the QF, after his first match against Kafel.

-"Juan Carlos was just unbelievable, "Corretja said. "He is going to be the new star in our country and across the world. It is not just because he is a great player but he is also such a nice guy." Ferrero might have been daunted by the prospect of facing the former world number 1, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, but if he was, he didn't show it. "I slept very well the night before," he said. "I rememberd what Alex had said to me, that I didn't have to prove anything to anybody, just to go out there and play my game."

Such wise words from Alex, and Juanqui listened well too.

 

[RogiFan]

Hi Vera!

Just posted on the other thread about this book, which I have. But it's great that you're quoting from it! The book is very good and worth it for the articles and the pix!

For you Juanqui fans, there is an article all about him and it's really neat! As I posted before, he said [before the DC00 final rubber] "Sunday will come quietly..."!

I think I mentioned this before but Juanqui was the "image" of the Valencia tourism in Spain last year! Pretty cool, eh??

 

[TennisHack]

Oooh, this book sounds wonderful!! I never knew there was such a thing so I'll have to check it out.

Keep the quotes coming, Vera!

 

[Vera]

This piece, we've probably read it somewhere before. But since it appears in the INTRODUCTION of this book, besides, I really like how the paragraph ends :

-The Spanish captain Javier Duarte, having made history, was equally impassioned. After the Australians left, the Spanish danced. And danced. And danced some more.

They went on to a disco called Gaslight, where the players ended up onstage, and Ferrero, the lad with the face of a choirboy, performed what a local paper called "un simpatico y discreto striptease." There were shades of Australia's 1999 hero, Mark Philippoussis, in Nice, but without the accompanying female distractions.

By the time the kid presented himself just before noon the next day for a marathon session of interviews, the Davis Cup had done this for him: Sergio Tacchini signed him up for a four-year shirt contract; the tourist office of his home province, Valencia, tabled a bid to become his leading sponsor; Spain's top communications company, Telefonica, offered what it called a "supercontracto"; and the citizens in his hometown of Onterniente circulated a petition to raise a monument in his honor. Ferrero had dinner that night at McDonald's. -

 

[Dissident]

Thanks Vera!
Great stuff!
Keep it coming, please...

 

[Dissident]

lol @ McDonald´s.
He was THE KING for a day, and could order Lunatic Shrimp and they would give ´em to him. And he chose a Big Mac?? hehe, how cool!

 

[RogiFan]

lol @ McDonald´s.
He was THE KING for a day, and could order Lunatic Shrimp and they would give ´em to him. And he chose a Big Mac?? hehe, how cool!

LUNATIC SHRIMP??! for lunatics?

You know Juanqui's fave food is MEAT, esp. McDo!!! He's a cutie!! Que mono es, nuestro Juanqui!! Viva el rey!

 

[Dissident]

Lunatic shrimps, like shrimps who live in the moon....
hehehe... I thought it was cool he wanted to have something as simple as McD

 

[Vera]

Okay, this is the chapter of the Final Round. It's really long so I'll just picked those interesting part. This is how the chapter begins:

HISTORY IN THE MAKING

Juan Carlos Ferrero was wrong. "Sunday will come quietly," he said in the characteristically understated way he has with a foreign tongue. Instead, Sunday, December 10, was to be the day this pencil-slim son of Onteniente surrendered his boyhood. It was the day, too, that Spain shed its status as the nearly country of the Davis Cup.

As an intoxicating combination, these two images, of fearless youth and deep-seated desire, proved too potent for the defending champions Australia, the nation that had done more than any other to illuminate the event's first century and be everything that Spain itself wanted to be.

That you reached page 18 of Monday's edition of the Barcelona newspaper Sport before there was mention of the city's illustrious football team was a compelling measure of the magnitude of Spain's tennis success. "La conquistaros" screamed the headline on the front. The Conquerors. And so it felt for the country that had dispensed with the old, failed formula and came up with a prototype it believed could usher it to glory. And glorious it was.

Ferrero, named Juan Carlos after the King of Spain, was lifted off his feet and greeted with a warm clasp of hands from the man himself - singularly the most captivating moment of his adolescence. The King strode onto the court at a rapturous Palau Sant Jordi to hug each and every one of his victorious Spanish team. He then walked across to pat the cheek of Australian Lleyton Hewitt as a kind-hearted father would a son.

In that moment, maybe, he hoped to cement a reconciliation between winners and losers - a defining moment in sport that sends a flutter through the hearts of those who have never experienced anything like this before, and that grips at the guts of those who have come so close but not quite made it.-

 

[TennisHack]

That you reached page 18 of Monday's edition of the Barcelona newspaper Sport before there was mention of the city's illustrious football team was a compelling measure of the magnitude of Spain's tennis success.

LOL, anybody else feeling the excitment of two years passed?

Ferrero, named Juan Carlos after the King of Spain, was lifted off his feet and greeted with a warm clasp of hands from the man himself - singularly the most captivating moment of his adolescence. The King strode onto the court at a rapturous Palau Sant Jordi to hug each and every one of his victorious Spanish team. He then walked across to pat the cheek of Australian Lleyton Hewitt as a kind-hearted father would a son.

Wait -- is this saying the King of Spain walked on court and hugged everyone and patted Hewitt on the cheek? Because I know for a fact that Juanqui didn't stride anywhere after his win -- he was carried on the shoulders of Alex Corretja

The King, like I said, was so cute during the match. I could totally see him doing something like that

 

[Vera]

This is the last part of that chapter, there's a lot in between but I'm not doing it right now, but I thought you should at least get the closure of the chapter:

- Ferrero was asked if the win would change his life. "It's definitely a great, great experience for the future and other tournaments," he replied. "I need to take the profit from this and I am only twenty. The future is everything now."

No Juan Carlos, this was no quiet Sunday. It was the loudest you might ever have in your life. -

 

[TennisHack]

No Juan Carlos, this was no quiet Sunday. It was the loudest you might ever have in your life. -

Well, it may be the loudest, but I hope he has a few more competing moments there -- like a Roland Garros crown or two?

Thanks, for that, Vera I'll have to bump up my match thread so these can be right together. I still have yet to see the match all the way through though this makes me want to go put in the tape RIGHT NOW!

 

[RogiFan]

Well, it may be the loudest, but I hope he has a few more competing moments there -- like a Roland Garros crown or two?

Thanks, for that, Vera I'll have to bump up my match thread so these can be right together. I still have yet to see the match all the way through though this makes me want to go put in the tape RIGHT NOW!

Ooh! I want that tape!!! that match!!!

 

[Vera]

Oh, maybe I should include this part too. After he won the Hewitt match...

- He sank to his knees, fell onto his back, and the next few minutes were lost as Duarte leapt on top of him - not something to be recommended (LMAO) - and the rest of the Spanish contingent followed en masse. Hewitt shook the empire's hand, took Newcombe's, and was in the dressing room before Ferrero had staggered back to his feet.

And so the blond boy king of Spanish tennis was swept off his feet to meet the King himself, and in celebration of the moment he delivered the bauble they had waited sixty-five years to raise. Ferrero was carried on the shoulders of Alex Corretja to his blue-blooded namesake who leaned down from the front row of the VIP box to shake the hands that had finally grasped the coveted Davis Cup.

He had the expression of a kid not exactly sure of what he had done. Being acclaimed a conquering hero was a bit too much for him, but he rose to the occasion and carried the Palau Sant Jordi around like a matador at a kill. It probably felt like he had tweaked a bull by the tail, for his 6-2, 7-6,6-4, 6-4 victory over Hewitt spanned three hours and forty-seven minutes of emotion-charged tennis, most of the time spent trading brilliance and brawn from the baseline. -