Davis Cup: Michael Westphal and the worst court of all time

In the Davis Cup semi-finals, Michael Westphal and Tomas Smid played a historic match on what is arguably the worst tennis court of all time.

We turn back time: The Davis Cup semi-final between the former West Germany and Czechoslovakia saw a curious and absurd scene.

The German Michael Westphal faced the favourite Tomas Smid. Then it happened: Westphal dared to launch a net attack, took a step forward at full speed and slipped on a loosening carpet mat. The advantage impact field disintegrated from the T-line and moved up in front of Westphal, who didn’t let himself be deterred but played the point to the end and also won.

Nowadays such an action would be unthinkable. Westphal is fortunate to have sustained no injuries to his ankle or the like.

The game on 4. But October 1985 in the Frankfurter Festhalle had a completely different meaning – it was to be the greatest moment of the German’s career.

Against Smid, Westphal was a clear outsider and could not escape this role in the first two sets either. Smid played a decisive role and won the first round with 8:6 – at that time there was no tiebreak in the Davis Cup. The Czechoslovakian also won the second set 6:1. An improvement was not in sight for Westphal. The third set started with a break for Smid and the match seemed to be decided. I fought the 20-year-old at the time before the carpet affair started at 5:5. Unimpressed by the adverse circumstances, Westphal continued to play and scored 7:5. In the fourth set there was another key scene: a blow from Westphal danced on the edge of the net and finally fell on his opponent’s side. 11:9 for the German and equalization of the set.

The deciding sentence between Westphal and Smid went down in history. At 17:15, the underdog from Germany triumphed over his opponent at the end and jumped out of the shadows of team-mate Boris Becker for a short time. With a playing time of five hours and 29 minutes and a total of 85 games played, it was the longest Davis Cup match in the history of the national competition to date.

Only six years later, Westphal had lost the most important battle of his life. At the age of just 26, the German died on 19. June 1991 at the Hamburg University Hospital on the consequences of an AIDS disease. In 1994, Westphal’s partner and Michael Stich founded the “Michael-Stich-Stiftung”, a foundation dedicated to supporting HIV-infected children.