USTA Men’s 45 Hardcourt Championships : Bill Cover’s Story Is One of Comebacks, Couple of Upsets

Every sport has its gut checks, those pivotal tests of character that separate players of fortitude from the pretenders.

But few athletes have competed successfully after surviving so literal a gut check as senior tennis player Bill Cover.

The 46-year-old San Diego resident will carry the evidence with him the rest of his life--a six-inch white scar on his stomach, which he refers to as “the zipper.”

Cover’s story was previously unfamiliar to seeded players in this week’s U.S. Tennis Assn. Men’s 45 Hardcourt Championships at the Lindborg Racquet Club in Huntington Beach. But Thursday’s results spelled the end of his era of anonymity.

With his excellent mobility and a good serve, Cover has been about as encouraging to the national hardcourt’s seeds as a long, hard drought.

Wednesday, he knocked off 10th-seeded Dick Leach, the USC tennis coach. He followed up Thursday with a 7-6, 2-6, 6-4 victory over seventh-seeded former champion Les Dodson of Kalamazoo.

Afterward, Cover smiled as he ate a tuna sandwich in the clubhouse while defending himself against rumors that he was actually a 39-year-old ringer. The smile said: What a difference a year makes.

This time last year, Cover dropped out in the middle of his first season of eligibility in the 45-year-old division, when he was the fifth-ranked player in Southern California.

At first, all he knew was that he couldn’t catch his breath while losing a close match to Herm Ahlers in the semifinals of the Laguna Niguel Invitational in July.

As it turned out, that would be the last tennis he would play for six months.

He had lost half of his system’s blood to an internal hemorrhage without knowing it. He spent 10 days in the hospital when a benign tumor the size of a golf ball was cut from his stomach.

Far from permanently damaging Cover’s ability on the court, he has responded with something more like a renaissance than a mere recovery.

With his victory against Dodson, he advanced to the quarterfinals against fourth-seeded Bob Duesler of Newport Beach, a 6-1, 6-4 winner against Ben Serkin Thursday. That’s the farthest Cover has ever gone in a national championship.

Last time Cover faced Duesler was a month ago in the La Jolla Invitational, where the two-time 45 hardcourt champion narrowly beat him, 7-6, 6-4.

“He’s a real tough player,” said Cover, a former Stanford University basketball player. “He plays the same kind of game I do, in the sense that he relies on court coverage, which is my primary sports skill.”

Regardless of the outcome of today’s match, Cover will retain the air of someone who is delighted just to have all organs operational and accounted for. Had his tumor been malignant, he said, he would have lost half his stomach.

“I couldn’t feel better and happier just to be playing,” he said. “The main thing is to be healthy.”