Around the World with Mr. Ed (May 5, 2001)
by Ed Toombs



This week, Mr Ed considers a rare public reaction to the surprisingly lenient punishment handed to ATP doping offender Juan Ignacio Chela, and reflects on some of the wackier examples of the many coaching changes in recent weeks.

ATP lenient to Chela?
As most of you probably know, last month the Argentine pro Juan Ignacio Chela was punished by Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for doping. Chela, determined to have taken methyltestosterone during the 2000 Cincinnati tournament, was penalized with a three-month suspension and the loss of all ranking points accumulated over the past eight months. Chela also had to give back the $8,550 he won in Cincinnati. More serious punishment ? a longer suspension plus a steeper fine ? was considered, but th e ATP was convinced by Chela's claim that he did not knowingly take the banned substance.

By and large, the players have not commented on the Chela case, nor on the leniency of the suspension. An exception occurred this week, when Costa Rican journeyman Juan Antonio Marin gave his thoughts to the German press agency DPA, and his comments were interesting.

"If they don't fine you and tell you that you just have a three month suspension," said Marin, "you might say, 'I'll take a chance and take something.' I don't think the young players would think this way, but the better ones?. To a lot of guys, three months would not bother them very much."

It is true that Chela will have to return to the Futures and Challenger circuit to rebuild his ranking. But given his talent, he should be able to do this in about six months, by my estimation. By early next year Chela should be back on the main tour again. It's true that 2001 will have been a lost year in his career, but at 21 he is young enough that he should be able to absorb this setback.

Marin may have a point, and the ATP may have blown a golden opportunity to make a strong statement against doping in the Chela case.


Coaching craziness

The game of musical chairs intensified rather wildly in the coaching ranks during the past month.

The highest-profile coaching switch involved WTA #1 Martina Hingis, who made the difficult decision to erase the "coach" portion of her mother Melanie Molitor's "mother/coach" title. Mother and daughter have not always had a smooth tennis relationship: who can forget the temporary separation in 1999 that was followed by Martina's shocking loss to Jelena Dokic in the first round of Wimbledon that year.

Cracks in the Hingis-Molitor relationship again manifested themselves at the Ericsson Open in Miami in March of this year. Following Martina's 3-6 6-7 loss to Venus Williams in the semis, Molitor uncharacteristically gave her daughter a public scolding. According to several European sources, Melanie said that her daughter/pupil "made me look like an idiot" with her poor tactics. One suspects that tension between the two was reflected by those remarks.

Hingis is now reportedly working with an obscure Australian coach, David Taylor, whom she met in Florida. We suspect that the hiring of a higher-profile coach, or, perhaps more likely, the return of her mother to the job, is only a matter of time.

Two of the other coaching changes that flooded the tennis scene had elements of the bizarre about them.

On the men's tour, eternal German rivals Nicolas Kiefer and Tommy Haas made a strange "switcheroo". Kiefer, who goes through coaches like a warm knife through butter, fired his recently-hired Dutch coach Sven Groeneveld, who was immediately hired by Haas!

Meanwhile, on the women's side, Dutch coach Eric van Harpen was being volleyed back and forth between Patty Schnyder and Conchita Martinez.

It had been reported that Van Harpen had agreed to return to work with Schnyder, whom he had coached to the top ten in the late 1990s before splitting with the Swiss star over her involvement with an eerie German guru named Rainer Harnecker. But a Schnyder-Van Harpen deal was never consummated, and the Dutchman instead agreed to become the mentor of Martinez. Ironically, this news was made known this week after Schnyder scored an upset win over Martinez in Hamburg.

Van Harpen had also been the longtime coach of Martinez from the age of 15. His tenure included Conchita's best years ? such as 1994, when she stunned the tennis world by winning Wimbledon.

Van Harpen's return to Martinez came as a surprise, given the rather bitter conditions that had surrounded their original split. Van Harpen had reportedly been critical of the distractions caused by Conchita's "close friend" (to use the official euphemism) at the time, GiGi Fernandez. The Dutchman was also frustrated by his student's wavering work ethic, once famously saying, "she is the sort of girl who would go to bed with a stick so she doesn't have to get up to put out the light."

Now in the twilight of her career, one suspects that Martinez wants to renew the Van Harpen relationship in an effort to claim an elusive Roland Garros title. The Spaniard came closer than she had ever come last year, when she reached the final, and knows that she only has a few more kicks at the proverbial can.


You may read previous Mr. Ed columns by clicking here.

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