WIZARD OF WINNETKA : For Paul Xanthos and Pierce College, 24-Year Courtship Has Formed the Perfect Match

There are tall ones, short ones, big ones, small ones, round ones, square ones. Some are gold, some are silver, some hang, others sit. They are old. They are new.

They are trophies. Lots of them. And pictures. And mementos.

And memories. A lifetime full, packed into a 10-by-6-foot shack-slash-museum that is the Pierce College tennis office.

The curator is the man leaning back in the wooden swivel chair, Paul Xanthos, 67, coach of the Pierce tennis team since 1965. “Have you seen my other office?” he asks a visitor. “There’s more in there. And others in the trophy case. There are so many, I don’t know what to do with them.”

For 41 years, Xanthos has been coaching tennis, starting as a player-coach at Occidental College, then moving to North Hollywood High and finally to Pierce. His teams have won roughly 600 matches. And, seemingly, he has a trophy, plaque, certificate or some semblance of a commemorative artifact for each one--most of which inspire an anecdote.

A battle-scarred wooden racket that hangs near one corner of the room sports a hole the size of one of Mike Tyson’s fists. A souvenir from somebody’s frustrating first lesson? No, it was resurrected from the trash bin at a local tennis club.

“I took it for sentimental reasons,” he says. “It’s just like the first new one I ever had. I bought it with money I got selling magazines.”

He points to a string of team pictures that decorate the walls. “Those are my players,” he says proudly. “That’s what it’s all about. My players, my students.”

With that, he starts with the 1965 Pierce team and works his way around to the present. In another corner are photos of his teams at North Hollywood.

“Many of these players went on to accomplish great things,” he says, tapping the plexiglass cover of one. “Some are pros and coaches, and there are doctors and attorneys, movie stars and producers . . . I find that very satisfying.”

His best player: “Probably Jonas Wallgard, who now plays at USC,” Xanthos says. “He won everything but the state, and he probably would have won that but he was sick.”

His best team? Xanthos manages to trim his choices to five but lists them in chronological order: 1975--”they were very good,” he says--1978, 1981 and 1983, all squads that won Southern California regional championships; and 1985, the first Pierce team to win the junior college championship at the prestigious Ojai tournament.

Two of Xanthos’ most famous former players are Bob Kramer and Nels Van Patten. Kramer, who played at Pierce in 1969 and ‘71, is now the executive director of the Southern California Tennis Assn. As a player, he is remembered as one who, fittingly, “knew all the rules. He was a real stickler for detail,” Xanthos said. “He has a great tennis mind.”

Van Patten, whose father is actor Dick Van Patten, played in 1974-75. “He was really hyper,” Xanthos said. “You never knew when he was just going to explode on the court. He’d do things--not to upset the other players--but he’d yell at himself. Once I had to pull him off the court.”

There was a notable side-benefit from having Van Patten around. Farah Fawcett, a friend of the family, often came around to watch him play.

Another player, Gary Grannell, class of 1965, is remembered as much for his grooming as for his forehand.

“His hair always had to be just right,” Xanthos said. “One time we drove to a match in a convertible and he was so concerned about his hair, he lost the match.” After that, the coach says he made sure Grannell, who went on to win the Southern California singles championship, had a roof over his head in transit.

And then there was Linda Evans, perhaps the most famous tennis player ever to set foot on the Pierce courts.

“Her and John Derek were in my beginning tennis class here,” Xanthos recalls. “She was younger then and boy . . . the kids out there watching handball would stop and watch them play. Her, rather. She’s a good little tennis player now from what I understand.”

Forget about any Linda Evans pictures, however. She was not a member of the team, and it is Xanthos’ teams, after all, to which the walls are a shrine.

“See this over there,” Xanthos says. “My 1976 team. That’s my second-place team, so they get a smaller picture.”

He laughs as he says it, but the mirth is tempered. It’s the kind of laugh a person makes when they’re kidding but still half-serious. Xanthos likes to win, no doubt about it. And all the years, the victories and the championships have done little to quench his thirst to come out on top.

“I play every point with my players,” says Xanthos, whose deep tan and physically fit appearance make him look as if he might win a few. “No matter who we’re playing, I’m always tight until we win that fifth point. Then I start to relax a little bit. I just told them yesterday, ‘You know guys, you’re just playing one match out there. I’m playing six.’ ”

Xanthos, almost always clad in spotless white tennis shorts with a blue and red Pierce jacket, is a self-described perfectionist. He learned to be that way in a military class at Occidental taught by Carl Trieb. “He was the ultimate disciplinarian. . . . I dedicated my first book to him,” Xanthos says.

Xanthos’ players show similar respect for their mentor, whom they describe as intense.

“He can put pressure on you during a match without saying a word,” says Bill Kearsley, Pierce’s No. 1 singles player. “If you lose a point, he shakes his head. He just looks down, kind of disgusted, and shakes his head. No one can stand it.”

Xanthos has been known to show displeasure even when his team happens to be winning handily.

“I don’t like my players playing around,” he says. “To me good sportsmanship is playing as well as you can and that means going out and beating your man as bad as you can.”

Indeed, Xanthos knows how to win. His North Hollywood teams were 127-8 in league matches. Pierce had never won a conference tennis championship before he took over but has done little else but win since.

Xanthos’ teams won 50 consecutive matches in his first four seasons. His first team placed third in the state. After winning four consecutive Western State Conference titles, Pierce was moved into the Metropolitan Conference, where it struggled for four seasons--finishing second twice, third and fourth.

But in 1973, Pierce started another streak--one that would bring 13 conference championships over the next 14 seasons. From April 3, 1976, to April 30, 1985, Xanthos’ teams won a state record 97 conference matches in a row. And since that loss, 5-1, to Harbor College, Pierce has yet to lose another conference match. “The Streak, Part III” is at 41 and counting.

He says he has had several offers to coach at the major college level but never came closing to leaving.

“I like it at Pierce,” he says. “I like the atmosphere, the teachers, the faculty I work with, I’ve always had good luck with the administration and my students and players are great.”

Xanthos’ record at Pierce stands at 418-84-1. This by a man who as a teen-ager taught himself to play using only the education he got from the book, “Budge on Tennis,” written by tennis great Don Budge.

Born in Greece, Xanthos came to the United States at the age of 2. He grew up in East Los Angeles and attended Roosevelt High and Los Angeles City College. He says if it were not for the junior college system, he never would have gone to a university to become a coach.

“My parents wanted me to learn a trade,” he says. “They didn’t see where athletics were going to get me anywhere and why I felt it was necessary to get up early, run 3 1/2 miles to meet a friend at Hollenbeck Park to play tennis for an hour, then run another mile to try to get to school on time.”

Now the man who taught himself to play by the book is the owner of numerous coaching awards, including national United States Tennis Assn. coach of the year, and is an author himself. He also helped develop the Warner Center Racquet Club and is partner with Steve Starleaf, a conference champion at Pierce in 1978, in a project to build another club in Burbank.

“He is one of the most respected coaches in the business,” Kramer says. “He is always donating his time and doing good things. And his record? I think John Wooden would be envious.”

And the more he wins, the easier it becomes. Xanthos no longer has to go out and find his players.

They find him.

“I don’t have to recruit anymore,” he says. “The players come to the top schools.”

Many are referals from former players who are coaches, or from pros at local clubs. Still others come by more circuitous routes, from places such as Peru, South Korea, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway and Israel.

Xanthos, an avid traveler, has attained the status of “Master Professional,” which places him among the top 40 or so of some 7,000 USTA certified tennis instructors and helps make him an attractive commodity for clinics worldwide.

“My motto is, ‘Have racquet, will travel,’ ” Xanthos says. “I can’t say no, because I love to travel.” This summer’s scheduled destination: Greece.

Several players have followed him back to the states. “We have been called the United Nations of tennis,” he says.

Pierce also attracts its share of major-college transfers and others on the rebound. Xanthos’ 1986 team consisted of players from South Korea, Israel and Mexico, two UCLA rejects and a former drug addict.

Nelson Gary II, the recovering addict, was the No. 1 player on this season’s team for exactly one match before suddenly leaving school without notice. The No. 2 player was to be Sudantha Soysa, from Sri Lanka. Soya missed several weeks of school, however, while he was away trying to make his country’s Davis Cup team. He still may be eligible later this season.

That leaves two Cal State Northridge transfers--one from Bolivia--and a South Korean, among others, left to try to net another title.

And they’re doing quite well. Pierce is 14-0-1 this season and 13-0 in the Western State Conference.

Kearsley and Mauricio Quiroga, the team’s Nos. 1 and 3 singles players, transferred when Northridge dropped its program. Sang Kim, No. 2 on the ladder, is yet another product of a clinic abroad.

Xanthos says he doesn’t mind piecing a team together--it’s the nature of coaching at a JC, he says--but watching a team with state championship potential unravel during the course of a few weeks can be frustrating.

Especially when you have never won a state championship.

For all his teams’ wins in conference matches, Xanthos, like Gene Mauch, has never coached a team that won the big one.

“We’ve been second, third, and fourth, but we’ve never won it,” Xanthos says, looking down. “This year I thought we had our best chance.”

His mood is only dark for a moment, however. “It doesn’t bother me that much. I would like to win one before I retire, but with the record we’ve compiled here I have to count my blessings,” Xanthos says.

And to do so, of course, he need only to glance at the wall. And the shelves. And the floor . . .