Everybody Knows Her Now : Defending Champion Kujawski Will Find It Hard to Surprise Anyone in 50-Over Hardcourt Event

There will be no ambushes by Pat Kujawski at this year’s Women’s National Hardcourt Tennis Championship for women age 50 and over. There will be no surprises, no sneak attacks.

This year, everyone knows her. It’s hard to hide when you’re defending champion.

Kujawski, from Rancho Bernardo, upset the first-, second- and fourth-seeded players last year to win the title. She finished the year ranked second nationally and, in the process, blew her cover.

“I’ve never been in this position before,” Kujawski, 53, said. “Now they’ll be out for me. I would rather it be like last year: Come in as an unknown and do your best. There would be no pressure.”

Such is life at the top.

When this year’s tournament begins Tuesday at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club, Kujawski will be seeded third behind top-rated Dorothy Matthiessen of Pasadena and No. 2 Jane Crofford of Nashville, Tenn.

It was a victory over Matthiessen, also top-seeded last year, that started the unseeded Kujawski on her path to the 1987 championship. In a three-hour quarterfinal match, Kujawski patiently wore down Matthiessen, 6-2, 6-7, 6-3.

In a semifinal, Kujawski again played the waiting game and knocked off fourth-seeded Kathe Henry of Hinsdale, Ill., 6-3, 4-6, 6-2, in another three-hour match.

Kujawski was down match point seven times in the final against Doris de Vries of Orangevale but won, 2-6, 7-6, 7-5.

The personable Kujawski laughs and shrugs her shoulders when she tries to explain how she managed to win it all.

“I was on the edge of losing--there were seven match points--and why I hung on I don’t know,” she said. “I was surprised, I think, with everybody else.

“I’m a defensive player. I let them take the chances. I can analyze people’s strengths and weaknesses and adapt and play off those weaknesses. But I don’t have a strength to my own game.”

That isn’t entirely accurate. Consistency and the ability to avoid unforced errors are definite strengths, and Kujawski uses them well in a patient back-court game that has evolved through more than 40 years of tennis.

Born in 1934, Pat Campbell grew up in Grand Rapids, Mich., and spent most of her youth competing with and against boys.

“I was a real tomgirl,” she said, “and I’d play whatever games the guys were playing. I started playing tennis on a school court at 9 or 10 with kids in the neighborhood. I was just athletic. My mom and dad were pretty good athletes. My dad got a college scholarship as a freshman to play baseball. It’s just inherited.”

With no high school athletic programs for girls in the late 1940s and early ‘50s, Pat competed in junior swim meets and tennis tournaments through the parks and recreation department. It was through that competition that she became a consistently solid player.

“I never paid for a lesson,” she said.

She attended Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa., and kept her tennis game sharp by playing against members of the men’s team.

She graduated in 1956 with a degree in sociology and moved to Boston to accept a job as district director for the Girl Scouts.

It was in Boston that she met Gene Kujawski. They were married in 1958 and moved for a short time to Buffalo, N.Y. Gene then took a job in sales with Hallmark cards, and they moved to Syracuse, where Pat again worked for the Girl Scouts.

The couple adopted two children, Linda and Mark, in 1961 and ‘62, and Pat stopped working for a few years.

“Then I decided being just a housewife and mother was a little boring,” she said, “so I started working on a master’s degree, and I was thinking I would be an elementary school teacher.”

Her affinity for teaching, and the fact that she had won several local tennis tournaments, prompted Kujawski to accept an offer to begin a junior tennis program through the parks program in a Syracuse suburb.

That was just as the tennis boom began, and within a couple of years, Kujawski was working full time as an instructor at an indoor club near her home.

The operative word here is indoor. After more than 20 years in the Northeast, the Kujawskis decided in 1984 that the sun was brighter on the Western side.

“We both quit our jobs, sold our house and brought our two dogs and a house load of furniture out here,” Pat said. “My mother was living out here, and I have a younger sister and her family who live out here. We had come out here several winters for vacations and knew what we were missing. It’s yucky back there.”

Once settled in Rancho Bernardo, Gene Kujawski got a job with a small greeting-card company, and Pat stopped teaching and started playing more seriously.

“I always kind of felt in my heart that if I got enough practice, I could hold my own,” she said. “But they’re all good players. On a given day, between 5 and 10 of the gals can win. It’s just whoever is playing the best.

“I’m doing this for enjoyment, not to prove anything. I didn’t have any big goals to come out here and take over. I felt I could be up there at the top, but it wasn’t something I set out to do.”

That’s just the way it happened.

Tennis Notes

Other contenders for the 50-and-over title are fourth-seeded Doris de Vries, Kathe Henry, Pat Stewart of Encinitas and Louella Parsons of Carpinteria. . . . Pat Kujawski, Dorothy Matthiessen and Jane Crofford will form the U.S. team competing for the Bueno Cup at the end of August in Rio de Janeiro. . . . The national hardcourt championship also will be decided in the 60-and-over age group. Defending champion June Gay of Piedmont, who, like Kujawski, was unseeded in 1987, is seeded first this year. Dorothy Cheney of Santa Monica is the seeded second, followed by Peggy Landtroop of Dallas and Virginia Glass of San Diego. . . . The team of Matthiessen and Crofford will be favored in 50s doubles. . . . La Jolla’s Helen Roach will form a strong 60s doubles entry with Cheney. . . . Competition begins at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. The finals Sunday are tentatively scheduled to begin at 11 a.m.