HE’S ALWAYS BEEN A TEAM PLAYER . . . : With Strings, John Lloyd Is Right at Home

John Lloyd is in the twilight of a mediocre tennis career playing for a struggling team in a league that has a tendency to come and go. In 16 years of professional tennis, Lloyd was never ranked higher than 23rd in singles, and that was back in 1978. If he hadn’t been married for nearly eight years to Chris Evert, few outside of England, where he is a golden-boy idol, or Wendy Turnbull, with whom he twice won the Wimbledon mixed doubles title, would have heard of him.

The Strings, Los Angeles’ entry into the ever-changing world of team tennis, lost their first four matches before winning Friday against the Sacramento Capitals and Sunday against the San Antonio Racquets. Lisa Bonder, at No. 36 the league’s highest-ranked women’s player, lost the first seven times she stepped onto the court for the Strings.

The concept of team tennis--the league began life as World Team Tennis and now calls itself Domino’s Pizza TeamTennis--is the ugly duckling of the tennis world, and few of its abundant detractors give it any chance of turning into a swan.

In 12 on-again, off-again years, TeamTennis has found few permanent homes. Once a 16-team league that played a six-month season and had some of the biggest names in the game signed to multimillion-dollar contracts, the current eight-team league has become a one-month haven for has-beens, never-will-bes, players in the middle rankings and doubles specialists.

Lloyd, who will be 32 in August and is obviously past his best days, always played his most successful tennis when someone else was on his side of the net.

Yet, he, the Strings and TeamTennis ought not be dismissed as inconsequential in the tennis world.

Lloyd, the Strings and TeamTennis are not Magic Johnson, the Lakers and the National Basketball Assn., but they don’t claim to be. They have come together this month at the Forum for reasons that benefit each.

Playing for the Strings, besides Lloyd and Bonder, are Eliot Teltscher and Anne White. Yes, she of the white body suit of 1985 Wimbledon fame.

All but Bonder, a Floridian, are Southern California residents who enjoy spending some time at home in the summer. Working out with the Strings allows them to do it. TeamTennis, with its one-set format and no-ad scoring, allows the players to work in pressure situations.

Said Lloyd: “I enjoy team tennis. The basis of a tennis player is the Grand Prix tour, that’s his top priority. But for this month, everyone in TeamTennis takes it seriously. We sure will say something if one of the team isn’t doing his part.”

Said Linda Rambis, the Strings’ general manager: “There are a lot of obstacles. But what we’d like is just for people to look at the product. Nobody’s really looking at the product. But if your interest is tennis, you’re going to enjoy it.

“To me, interesting tennis is not watching Chris Evert beat somebody in 45 minutes. To me, interesting tennis is a close match, a lot of (pressure) points. We have that.”

Rambis and Jeanie Buss, Strings’ owner and president, are behind a number of entertainment ventures, in both sports and the performing arts, that have been booked into the Forum over the last few years. They have been running the Strings for six years, since the team and the league were resurrected in 1981, after a two-year hiatus. They also run Forum Championship Tennis, the series of exhibition matches that has featured John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Jimmy Connors and Stefan Edberg.

It seems only appropriate that two women who are best known for the men in their lives have brought to the Strings a man who is best known for a woman in his life. Rambis is the wife of Laker forward Kurt Rambis, and Buss is the daughter of Jerry Buss, who owns the Lakers and the Kings and the Forum.

While TeamTennis fights to establish an identity, Lloyd is in the early stages of carving out a niche separate from the one he shared on the pro tour with Evert.

“I think I have my own identity in tennis,” said Lloyd, who is living in Santa Monica. “(Establishing a separate identity) has nothing to do with why I’m playing TeamTennis. I couldn’t compete with Chris at her level. I’m not John McEnroe. This is just me now.”

His divorce from Evert became final April 14, three days before what would have been their eighth wedding anniversary, but he says he harbors no bitterness, bears no grudge.

“I just spoke with Chris, actually, this evening,” Lloyd said last week before a String match. “She wanted to know how the team was doing. . . . The relationship is absolutely fine. It always will be. We’ve always been the best of friends.”

The official grounds for divorce were irreconcilable differences, and as in their well-publicized six-month separation in 1984, the differences were caused by travel and lack of time together.

In the early 1980s, Lloyd’s career suffered because of his attention to Evert’s career. His ranking plummeted from No. 23 the year before they were married to No. 356 by 1980. But in 1985, he was named Tennis magazine’s Comeback Player of the Year after rebuilding his singles game in 1984 and reaching the U.S. Open quarterfinals. In late 1985, he was No. 42.

Lloyd retired from the men’s pro singles tour after losing to Christo Steyn of South Africa in the first round at Wimbledon in 1986. Yet, since he and Evert wrote an autobiographical account of their marriage and life on the tennis tour with British journalist Carol Thatcher two years ago, Lloyd has revised some of his other retirement plans, which included taking up golf. Talk of leaving the base line for the fairways has taken a back seat to a variety of opportunities in tennis that will keep him in Southern California.

“L.A. was one of the first places I came to in the States,” Lloyd said. “I’ve always been quite fond of it.”

Lloyd is still a top-flight doubles player.

Lloyd also has started working with other players. He has worked in Los Angeles with young British star Stephen Shaw and with White. He said he’ll probably hit with Evert when she comes out to the area to train before the U.S. Open in September, and he doesn’t rule out a move into full-time coaching.

“I’ve enjoyed doing it to a certain extent,” he said. “If they’re serious, I’ll do it, if they want to work. I’m not interested in doing it for a bit of hit and giggle.

“But I’ve just come off the circuit after being there 16 years, and I don’t want to go right back out again. If they’re here, that’s fine. I’d really like to set up a camp, a club somewhere in L.A.”

He also won’t rule out a move back into competitive singles play, saying that he would like to try the 35-and-over circuit in a few years.

But his greatest tennis passion these days is team play. In an individual sport where even winners of Grand Slam doubles titles are anonymous unless they’ve also won the singles trophy, Lloyd is not an individual player. He was a long-time member of the British Davis Cup team, and last February he played for his older brother David’s team, the Heston Fiats, in England.

The way Rambis and Buss look at it, plucking Lloyd out of his Santa Monica home was something of a recruiting coup.

“The first thing we wanted to do was improve our doubles,” Buss said. “When we heard he was living in L.A., we went after John. He is a marquee player, which doesn’t hurt, but we wouldn’t have wanted him if he wasn’t a good player.”

In TeamTennis, however, marquee value can’t hurt. Since the reincarnation of TeamTennis in 1981, the Strings have never been a losing proposition for Buss, but through their first three home matches this season, they have averaged only about 1,000 spectators.

“The trouble is, L.A. is used to the best of everything,” Lloyd said. “(TeamTennis) is not Wimbledon, but it could really be enjoyable if people would come out and support their team.”

It happens in other places. The Charlotte Heat drew 4,000 fans opening weekend. In Sacramento, Pam Casale has a considerable following.

Of course, it may be that team tennis is ahead of its time, as, perhaps, was White’s body suit.

“Tennis players haven’t thought of wearing things to improve their performance, they’ve been dressing for product recognition,” White said. “In certain situations, for competitive advantage, the body suit is appropriate. Maybe I was just 20 years ahead of my time.”

If that’s the case, Lloyd will probably never wear a body suit on the tennis court. He should be on the fairways by then.