Garrison Plays Tennis on the Run

If Zina Garrison were a man, she’d probably be playing shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals, scooping up ground balls in the hole, batting .310 and stealing 50 to 60 bases.

Or, she might be batting down passes in the Green Bay Packer secondary, or running back punts or starring on special teams.

If she were European, she’d probably have half a dozen state-appointed coaches or psychologists running her program, overseeing her diet and checking her chemical balance.

If she were white, people would be saying how promising her career was and how nicely her timetable was progressing.

But Zina is not a man. So she’s scooping up ground strokes with a tennis racket instead of a glove, she’s batting back serves and volleys, not curves, and the passes she intercepts are at the net.

She’s not European, she’s as American as Texas and she’s not a product of an Iron Curtain laboratory but the Houston public parks. Her only coach is, as he has always been, John Wilkerson of those parks. He discovered her.

She’s not white. So everyone says, “Well, of course, she’s another Althea Gibson,” and they wait for her to start beating players who have been around the game a dozen or so years longer than she. They want her to do things even Althea couldn’t do at her age.

What Garrison is, is a tremendously gifted athlete of 21 who settled on tennis because it was the next-best thing to softball and football when she was 10 years old, and it was more socially acceptable than getting in fights with the kids next door.

She plays tennis with the kind of controlled ferocity of a young tigress with cubs.

“You can’t get it by her,” complained a recent opponent at the national clay courts tournament in Indianapolis. “You think, ‘Well, that’s a winner,’ and all of a sudden here comes Zina out of nowhere, not only getting to the ball but slamming it back at your feet.”

She whirls, dives, jumps, leaps. She doesn’t just get to a ball, she surrounds it. She is one of those people who look as if they are in motion when they are just sitting still. She scurries, skids, slithers and pounces on the court. You half expect she eats standing up and sleeps in shifts, or on airplanes where there’s no room to practice serves.

She shocked the world this year by getting to the semifinals at Wimbledon, the final at Indianapolis. In the Women’s Tennis Assn. final at Amelia Island, Fla., she beat Chris Evert Lloyd, no less, in straight sets. At Wimbledon, she forced Martina Navratilova, no less, to a tie-breaker in the second set to win.

Garrison became a tennis player because of John Wilkerson and her brother’s girlfriend. The girlfriend played tennis, the polite form, not the let’s-lock-the-door-and-turn-out-the-lights game Zina was to favor.

So, her brother took Zina to MacGregor Park in Houston where Wilkerson conducted a program for public park players. Wilkerson noticed the young girl sitting, huddled in embarrassment, too shy to introduce herself.

Zina didn’t learn the game at the level where there was a fresh can of balls every few games, and her skirt wasn’t designed by Tingling. She arrived at the court by bus, not chauffeur. She didn’t learn the “Nice shot, Amy!” game but a roughhouse version with boys who showed her no mercy and played a the kind of game that called for a hard hat.

“The way she plays, sometimes you think there’s two of her,” one of her opponents once grudgingly conceded.

This year may be a pivotal one for Garrison. The weaknesses of her game are her first and second serve. They’re hard to tell apart. But, once the ball is in play, she may be the hardest-hitting 5-foot 4 1/2-inch player since Willie Keeler. Zina not only tries to hit ‘em where they ain’t, but where they can’t get to.

She is probably the main gate attraction at the $250,000 Virginia Slims of Los Angeles tournament this week at the Manhattan Country Club courts in Manhattan Beach.

Tennis is a game in which establishing dominance is important. Once you beat a player, chances are you keep on doing it.

So, it’s important for Garrison to make her move for the top. With Navratilova and Lloyd in the ad court of their careers, and with tournament seeds reading like goulash recipes, Zina is one of the few Americans ready to move into the successor role. A win at Manhattan Beach could go a long way toward getting her ready for a win at Flushing Meadow next month.

A lot of Americans therefore are hoping for a Garrison finish. The way Zina plays, opponents think that the baseline is protected by a garrison, all right. Of U.S. Marines.