The Yarra River, in Melbourne, is hardly the most inviting spot for a swim. Teeming with litter, sewage, pollution and a lot more unsavoury items besides, it’s the sort of water course you admire from a safe distance, but never approach close enough to smell. Imagine the raised eyebrows, then, when Jim Courier celebrated his 1992 Australian Open win by diving straight into it. Onlookers must have thought he’d lost his mind.
As with all the best stunts, it started with a bet. Prior to the tournament final, the American player had been jogging alongside the river with his coach Brad Stine. “He said ‘If you win this thing I’ll dive in there’,” Courier explained afterwards. “So I said ‘If you go in, I’m following you’.” Clearly neither had read the stories in Melbourne’s newspapers that morning reporting that the Yarra was 18 times more polluted than legally permitted.
Courier’s swim was a messy conclusion to a very messy Grand Slam final. The then 21-year-old from Florida, or ‘The dude from Dade County’ as he was known, was renowned for his brutal, unsubtle power tennis. His opponent, Sweden’s Stefan Edberg, normally supplied ground strokes and volleys of sublime beauty, but on this January day in 1992 he looked out of rhythm and out of sorts. The combination wasn’t pretty to watch. But it was Courier who eventually triumphed 6-3 3-6 6-4 6-2.
“Without fuss or fanfares – but with grit and determination – Courier set about his task of stopping the game’s most elegant stylist,” wrote Alan Trengrove in the Australian magazine Tennis. “Deprived of service rhythm, Edberg struggled. Faced with Courier’s hefty forehands and solid double-handed backhands, he lacked consistency in his serving and double-faulted at a few critical moments.”
In the searing heat of the Australian mid-summer, both players were exhausted by the end of the match. But this didn’t stop Courier from honouring his bet. “Courier waited until the end of the presentations and then ran across Batman Avenue with his coach, and the two of them dived into the river.” it was later noted in the book Our Open: 100 Years of Australia’s Grand Slam. “Clearly the water quality – or lack of – didn’t bother Courier.”
By then the American’s sweltering limbs were probably glad for the chance to cool off. Stripped down to just their tennis shorts, Stine and Courier fully submerged themselves to the delight of those watching. “It was really dirty,” said the newly crowned Australian Open Champion, confirming what every Melbournian already knew too well.
Yet the very next year, after beating Edberg in the final for a second time, Courier went back for more. So delighted was he to defend his title successfully that again, after the trophy presentation, he dived straight into the Yarra.
But this was to be his last ceremonial dunking. “I got some sort of stomach virus after swallowing some of the water,” he explained later, his face grimacing at the memory of it.