Tennis: Wimbledon '99 - Rafter's campaign reinforced by old-fashioned family values

Richard Williams on an Australian throwback to an earlier generation of tennis swashbucklers

AND THE next guest in Mr Boris Becker's living room will be Mr Patrick Rafter. This afternoon the No 2 seed becomes the latest to face the challenge of the three-time champion, who is treating these championships as positively his final rendezvous. Becker has taken residence on the Centre Court with the intention of remaining there until Sunday night, and if you want to remove him you will have to bring heavier equipment than the youthful promise and optimism that were temporarily battered out of the 18-year-old Lleyton Hewitt on Saturday afternoon. A couple of hours later, Rafter's victory over Thomas Enqvist suggested that the gifts of a more experienced but still youthful and optimistic Australian might be enough to seal the permanent eviction order.

"You're going to have to ask me that on Monday night," was Rafter's typically sensible reply to an inquiry about how he would feel, facing the crowd's sentimental favourite. "I really don't know yet." But he has a bit of a clue, deriving from his experience at Wimbledon last year, when he went out to Tim Henman in the fourth round in front of a highly partisan Centre Court congregation.

It had not been a comfortable experience. "There was the whole Henman thing. The English crowd lifted him and it sort of deflated my ego a little bit - well, my confidence would be a better word. I'm going to run into that with Becker, as well, and hopefully I'll be a bit better and stronger this time."

The 26-year-old Rafter is a big man, with a ton of presence on court to back up his world No 2 ranking and his earnings of $700,000 (pounds 437,500) so far this season. His 6ft 1in and 175lb frame give him an ideal combination of power and athleticism, and his exotic hair-do - scraped back and tied into one of those mini-ponytails that characterised Argentinian footballers early in this decade, before Daniel Passarella ordered them to the barber - lends him a feral glamour. But he was right about the ego thing. Rafter is not the kind of Aussie sportsman who believes that the game is half- won by gimlet-eyed facedowns or pre-match verbals.

He is, as John Newcombe suggested this week, a bit of a throwback to an earlier generation of carefree swashbucklers, men like Newcombe and Tony Roche, whose priority was to have fun and maintain a semblance of humanity along with playing good tennis. And, in Rafter's case, the key to such a healthy attitude seems to be an upbringing in Queensland as part of a large and solid family. The son of an accountant, he has five brothers - one of whom, Geoff, travels with him - and three sisters.

"Yes, that definitely helps," he said, when Newcombe's suggestion was put to him. "When you do well in sports, you can lose your way a little bit. But having those role models and that tradition, it's such a great thing to look up to. Those guys went out there and tried their best, but at the end of the day they were regular people and they realised that all we're doing is playing a sport and we shouldn't be looked at any differently just because of that. Obviously sometimes it's difficult to put things in perpective, when people always want your attention, and all you want is to be a normal person. I remember the first time I did pretty well, back in '94, I was becoming a little bit affected by it and my family pulled me back in line very quickly."

Newcombe's advice took a practical form last year, when Rafter hit a patch of poor form. The old champion wrote the young man a note. "Just go out there and enjoy yourself," it said, and Rafter has used it as a kind of talisman ever since. "People have always said that to me, and it was going to sink in one day, but finally it did and I went on court enjoying myself again. That's when I play my best tennis."

A fan of fishing, golf and beaches, Rafter set up home in Bermuda a few years ago. He has no permanent coach, but Roche is with him this week, and Newcombe is also available for consulation. On Saturday, according to Rafter, it was Roche's advice during a one-hour rain break that enabled him to hasten the victory over Enqvist.

This was his second victory in a row against a tough Swede, following his absorbing second-round defeat of Jonas Bjorkman, his doubles partner, in the twilight of Thursday. Enqvist, a talented 25-year-old baseliner who forfeited a top 10 ranking to injuries, lost his serve in the first game of the match, but then began firing cannonballs and broke back to 4-4 with two exquisite passing shots. "At that point," Rafter recollected, "I thought, `I don't like the way this is going at all.' Then I was 15- 30 down on the next serve at 5-4, and I was really starting to panic. I wasn't finding any areas to hurt him. But I came up with some shots at the right time."

When the two men emerged from the unscheduled interval, Rafter was up by a set and a service break. Within two minutes he had polished off the second set, and rolled into the third with an unstoppable momentum, winning the match 7-6, 6-2, 6-2. By the end he was returning Enqvist's serve so effectively, particularly with a lethal chip on the second ball, that the Swede, striving desperately to find an antidote, gave up five of his last seven service points on double faults.

"I felt very comfortable," Rafter said. "It was great to come back out. The crowd were happy to stay out there and enjoy the tennis." He praised Enqvist's serving in the early part of the match, but eventually he had found particular satisfaction in his own delivery, which relies on angle rather than sheer speed. Sixteen of his 17 aces during the match were delivered at speeds between 106 and 120 mph; the 17th and last, as if to prove the point, was a second-serve winner fired at exactly 93 mph.

"I'm going for my kick serve," he said, "and it really is working on these courts. In the past I've stayed away from that. I've always tried to slice the serve a little bit. That's one thing I've noticed. And another is that the movement seems to be better this year."

Movement, meaning footwork, is vital to Rafter's sense of well-being on court. It may be the reason he has won the US Open in the last two years on the hard courts of Flushing Meadow while failing to live up to his home crowd's hopes on the softer Rebound Ace surface at Melbourne in the Australian Open. At least that second US title brought an apology from John McEnroe, who suggested after the first that Rafter might turn out to be nothing more than a one-Slam wonder.

At Wimbledon, where he made his debut in 1993, the season he was named ATP Tour Newcomer of the Year, he has never been beyond the fourth round - the stage at which he was ejected not just by Henman last year but by Todd Woodbridge in 1997 and Goran Ivanisevic in 1996. He has met Becker twice, and lost both times - on a hard court at Indianapolis in 1993, where he took a set off the German, and on grass at Queen's in 1996, when Rafter broke the Becker serve four times but still finished up losing 7-5 6-4.

Can he reverse the verdict in their second meeting on the natural surface? "It'll be a tough match," Enqvist remarked after coming off the court on Saturday. "But Pat is a serve and volleyer who moves well on the grass, so he's definitely one of the guys here who can win the tournament."

"It's going to be a tough one," Rafter agreed. He had watched Becker's match, a couple of hours before his own, with a particular interest in the progress of Hewitt, his young compatriot. "Boris was impressive today," he said, "specially the way he served against Lleyton. You don't want to give Lleyton anything in his zone, and Becker just hit his second serve in the corner all day. I'll be trying to break his serve the way I did at Queen's, hoping I carry on serving the way I did today. I've put two really good matches together now, and I haven't done that at Wimbledon before."

An interesting contrast of mental approaches is promised on the Centre Court today, pitting the ferocity of Becker's volcanic will against Rafter's more relaxed approach to the workings of destiny. "I just try to play the best I can in every match," the Australian said on Saturday. "If I do play great one day and not so good the next, it's out of my control. I'm not someone who tries to build it up. If you get through the first week, that's a relief. At this stage, you're coming down to the guys who're playing well and are happy on this surface, and I feel my game's coming along pretty well. I know it might sound monotonous, but I really do take one game at a time. And with Boris coming next, that's definitely the attitude."