Raiders, World Cup, Take Note: Gilbert Advances at Wimbledon

Brad Gilbert has won in Taipei and in Tel Aviv. He has been a finalist in Stuttgart and in Johannesburg. And here he is in England, still hanging around Wimbledon in his long-sleeve L.A. Raider sweat shirt, still showing just enough talent to have an outside shot at winning this thing. American wherewithal in London.

“For the last four years, I figured out I’ve been on the road for 140 weeks,” he said.

That can be a bother when a guy is hungry for up-to-the-minute sports news from the States. For some crazy reason, they still do not have SportsPhone in Taiwan.

But usually it is all right, because Barry Gilbert, dad of Brad, calls him long-long-distance from Piedmont, Calif., whenever something genuinely important happens--like, if the Oakland A’s win, or if the Golden State Warriors win, or if anything noteworthy should be going on with the Raiders, the team Brad has adored ever since he scalped tickets outside their stadium in Oakland when he was 12.

If he is not playing tennis, Gilbert, 24, the former NCAA singles runner-up from Pepperdine, sits in his room, memorizing newspaper sports pages. First he finds out what happened to his favorite teams, crummy as some of them are. Next he checks the small print. “I’m a junkie for anything on the scoreboard page,” he said. “Just this morning I got a USA Today and I was studying the archery results.”

He has great retentive powers and can rattle off batting averages, or basketball standings, or, if necessary, cricket results.

“Lately, I’ve been getting into World Cup soccer,” Gilbert said after Thursday’s 7-6, 7-6, 6-2 win over Mike Leach, the University of Michigan man who beat him in the 1982 NCAA final. “The best game I ever saw, in any sport, ever, was that one last week between France and Brazil. That was incredible.

“So, as much as I hate to admit it, I’m into soccer now. That’s what the guys in the locker room care about anyway, so I might as well. Becker was glued to the TV last night, watching West Germany. That’s all he was talking about today. I guess Boris doesn’t care how the A’s did against Kansas City.”

Gilbert is in the same draw as Becker, the defending champion, and will meet him in the quarterfinals if both get that far. First, though, Gilbert has to tangle with the tallest player on the tour, 6-foot 8 1/2-inch Milan Srejber of Czechoslovakia, and then probably with fifth-seeded Stefan Edberg of Sweden, who Thursday beat Paul Annacone, 6-4, 6-7, 4-6, 7-5, 6-0.

Another seeded Swede, No. 2 Mats Wilander, was similarly pressed, requiring 3 hours 45 minutes to outlast Englishman Andrew Castle, 4-6, 7-6, 6-7, 6-4, 6-0. Castle had been the last gentleman left in this 100th Wimbledon for the British, who have not won in men’s singles for 50 years.

The struggles of the Swedes reinforced the belief that this is anybody’s Wimbledon. “I tell you, any one of 10 guys could win it,” Gilbert said.

“It’s a nice feeling to sit around the locker room when everybody sitting there thinks they can win it. If (John) McEnroe was here, the feeling would be different. Somebody’s always feeling they’ve got to do something wild to beat him. If Mac was here, he’d be a solid favorite. But without him, there isn’t one.”

Those few good men who have beaten McEnroe have never found it easy, and when Gilbert got the job done at the 1985 Nabisco Masters tournament, McEnroe reportedly told Gilbert that he did not “deserve to be on the same court.”

If that’s true, it does not say much for Jimmy Connors or Edberg, both of whom Gilbert defeated at the U.S. Indoor championships at Memphis, Tenn. And Gilbert took Ivan Lendl three sets indoors at Philadelphia.

It did not kill Gilbert’s confidence to win Thursday in straight sets over Leach, whom he had not previously beaten until the Queen’s Club tournament in England two weeks ago. Gilbert has not forgotten that NCAA final. “If I could ever have anything back in my career, it would be that match,” he said. “Winning the NCAA was the one thing I wanted to do before turning professional.”

After Gilbert had left Arizona State due to a personality clash with his coach, he played at Foothill College in Los Altos and wanted to turn pro right away, but his coach persuaded him to honor a commitment Gilbert had made to Pepperdine. Gilbert did and never regretted it. “Any American kid who does not play college tennis and decides to turn pro at 18 is making a wrong, wrong decision,” he says now.

Gilbert came from a tennis family. His sister Dana played for UCLA and on the pro tour--she is a teaching pro now--and brother Barry Jr. played in college for South Carolina. Barry now owns a San Francisco pizza joint called Bogie’s. Asked if the spelling was like Humphrey Bogart or like golf bogeys, Brad said: “Doesn’t matter. They’re both bad news.”

Gilbert had a racket in his hand at 4, almost quit because of burnout at 16, was ranked 282nd in the world at 20 and was ranked 18th by the end of 1985. He is a scrapper, full of hustle and banter. Wrote Arthur S. Hayes in Tennis magazine: “Gilbert brings to professional tennis the kind of boys-of-summer enthusiasm that Pete Rose and Yogi Berra brought to pro baseball.”

Any sort of sport makes Gilbert emotional. A rabid Raider fan who wore his favorite white pullover to an interview Thursday, Gilbert recalled the last game he attended. “I think I didn’t move from my seat for about an hour after they lost to the Patriots,” he said.

Somewhere, Boris Becker didn’t care a bit.

Wimbledon Notes

“Jo Shuts Away Jailbird!” the London Sun headlined after Britain’s Jo Durie had defeated Czechoslovakia’s Regina Marsikova in women’s singles. Marsikova was imprisoned in 1981 for vehicular manslaughter after an auto accident in which a person was killed. She spent some time in jail and could not leave the country for three years. . . . Boris Becker took two sets from Tom Gullikson and was 2-2 in the third when darkness interrupted. . . . The only seeded player to fall Thursday was No. 9 Zina Garrison, beaten 6-4, 0-6, 6-4 by Britain’s Anne Hobbs. “When I got the bit between my teeth and the crowd behind me, nothing was going to stop me,” Hobbs said. . . . Lori McNeil of Houston, whose father, Charlie, played for the San Diego Chargers, stayed alive with a victory over Marcella Mesker of the Netherlands. Mesker led, 5-4, during the second set but slipped, hurt her knee and had to default. . . . Chris Evert Lloyd figuratively stumbled for a set, but recovered to beat Pam Casale, 6-0, 5-7, 6-1. . . . Loosey-goosey Aussie Pat Cash won his match, 6-7, 6-3, 6-2, 7-5, over New Zealand’s Russell Simpson, plucked a hat off a courtside bobby’s head and modeled it for photographers and the crowd. At last, a cop who not only serves and protects, but volleys and protects.