Tennis Prose




Nov/22

27

When Marcelo Rios First Shocked The Tennis World

By Scoop Malinowski

There are a few stories of young phenoms achieving stunning early success in pro tennis… Lleyton Hewitt won his first ATP title at his first ATP tournament in hometown Adelaide as a 15 year old unknown wildcard. John McEnroe reached the semis of Wimbledon as a Stanford University freshman qualifier. Boris Becker and Michael Chang winning Wimbledon and Roland Garros respectively as 17 year olds.

The teenaged Marcelo Rios also scored a surprise win in an exhibition against an established ATP veteran.

It was November 1993 and Rios was the ITF number 1 junior in the world. The Chilean tennis federation organized an exhibition for the already popular eccentric 17 year old, then ranked 550 ATP, to face the former top ten Emilio Sánchez Vicario of Spain, ranked ATP 41 at that moment.

The rights to the television broadcast of the match were obtained by Megavision network and the management of the private channel “suggested” that for commercial purposes the match should last at least 70 minutes. In other words, the player who won the first set should lose the second set, so that there was a third set final – to satisfy the needs of the sponsors of the duel. But there was a snag in the plan. When the network consulted this scenario to Rios, the rebellious teenager defiantly refused to accept the proposal.

The match was played on the center court of the National Stadium and Rios performed a masterpiece and easily handled the Spaniard 63 64 in under an hour.

In December of that year 1993, the lefthander returned to compete in junior events, winning a total of 21 out of 23 matches, including two titles, to achieve the ITF World Junior Championship. The next year Rios would take the step to professional tennis.

Rios began 1994 ranked 559. By May he won a Challenger in Dresden, Germany (defeated Oliver Gross in the final 57 63 63). At Roland Garros as a wildcard ranked 283 he beat Joshua Eagle in the first round in three sets before playing ATP world no. 1 Pete Sampras in the second round, losing 67 67 46.

Rios finished 1994 ranked 106 in the world. Four years later he won Indian Wells and Miami back to back and became ATP world no. 1.

(Rios artwork by Andres Bella, created out of pages and words cut out of my book Marcelo Rios: The Man We Barely Knew.)

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