Wave Net Star to Get a Taste of Pro Tour : Coach Wishes Her Well, but Wants His No. 1 Singles Back Next Season

Gualberto Escudero, coach of the Pepperdine women’s tennis team, has nothing but good wishes for Ginger Helgeson, his No. 1 singles player, as she gets ready for her summer tour as an amateur among the professionals.

He also wishes that Helgeson will return to his team next season and not enter the professional ranks.

With Helgeson, a sophomore from Edina, Minn., who played strong matches in the recent NCAA tournament at UCLA, Escudero figures that Pepperdine can be one of the nation’s top five teams next year.

Without her, he said, “I would have to find someone quickly. (She would be) tough to replace.”

That she would. The U.S. Tennis Assn. thought so much of her that it selected her on its national team of college players that will play this summer as amateurs at selected events on the professional tour.

UCLA’s Jessica Emmons and USC’s Trisha Laux are on the 12-member team, which includes 1987 NCAA singles champion Shaun Stafford of Florida and five members of Stanford’s team, which won its third straight NCAA title at UCLA this year.

Selections were based on ranking, record, sportsmanship and attitude, with special consideration for potential, according to the association.

USTA coaches will guide the players in “managing stress, cooperating with media and sponsors, the application of sports science principles and handling the practical aspects of a tennis career.”

Escudero said the association has formed its first development team to “try to catch up with the rest of the world . . . to prepare the players for the pros.”

Helgeson, ranked as high as 18th in the nation among junior players before attending Pepperdine on a scholarship, has done some preparation in her two seasons with the Waves.

Playing at No. 2 singles last year, Helgeson compiled a 19-7 record in dual match play and qualified for last year’s NCAA tournament in singles, difficult for a freshman, Escudero said. She won her first NCAA singles match before losing to Katrina Adams of Northwestern, who has turned pro.

This year she was even better as No. 1 singles with a 31-5 record and led Pepperdine to a 22-4 record after the team had an off year with a 9-22 mark in 1987. In NCAA team competition, she led the 16th-seeded Waves to a 5-2 upset of No. 7 Texas before losing in the second round to top-ranked Florida, 5-1.

The single Pepperdine victory against Florida, which reached the NCAA finals against Stanford, went to Helgeson--and it was a big one. She defeated Halle Cioffi, ranked 36th in the world, in convincing fashion, 6-3, 6-2.

Cioffi lost in this year’s NCAA singles final to teammate Shaun Stafford and turned pro.

Helgeson, who said she is ranked about “500 and something” in the world, said that she wasn’t surprised that she upset Cioffi because “when I was playing the match I was working on the points and doing what I planned.”

When she plays anyone, she said, “I try to ignore the opponent and play the ball. I tend to look only at the ball, not at an opponent’s face or body but just the ball in her hand. Before, I always used to look at that person.”

Helgeson, seeded seventh in singles in the individual portion of this year’s NCAAs, must have taken her eye off the ball late in the match against unseeded Lupita Novelo of USC in the opening round. She was leading before Novelo bounced back to win, 2-6, 7-6, 6-3.

Instead of focusing on the ball, Helgeson said, “I was concentrating on being on the national team, on becoming an All-American.

“I was tight, very tight, and she was getting almost all of her first serves in. She got hot, and she plays very well against top players.”

So does Helgeson, whose five losses this season were mostly to top players, including Stafford, Laux and Stanford’s Eleni Rossides, all members of the USTA team.

Escudero said Helgeson’s best shot is a forehand from about a yard inside the back-court line. It is a powerful weapon, he said, that “gives an opponent little time to recover and gives her an easy volley on her next shot.”

More powerful than her forehand, however, is her intelligence, Escudero said. “I think her mind grows with her game. A lot of people have the shots, but they may have fear and hold back.

“She accepts getting better and is not shocked by it. I don’t think there’s another player who would not realize that she was beating the No. 1-ranked college player (Cioffi).”

Helgeson played her first tennis when she was 6 or 7 but it was “just for fun.” She started getting serious about the game at 9 and entered a country club tournament in her home town. Even then she must not have been too serious because she doesn’t remember if she won or lost.

She began spending summers at a tennis camp in St. Petersburg, Fla., run by the late Harry Hopman, who coached Australia’s Davis Cup team for years.

Hopman’s camps, which she attended five times, “focused on treating players as people, not just as junior players.” At some other camps, she said, “you just go and play tennis forever.”

She went to Florida in the summer “for the competition because I wasn’t getting pushed in Minnesota.”

She will be pushed on the USTA tour, but Escudero hopes she will not push back so hard that she decides to try the pros after the tour is over.

With Helgeson as the keystone of next year’s Pepperdine team, Escudero thinks that Pepperdine could win next year’s NCAA championship. The other contenders, he said, are Stanford, Florida, USC and UCLA.

Helgeson’s supporting cast at Pepperdine next year would include freshman Janna Kovacevich, who did well in the individual portion of the NCAAs; sophomore Carrie Crisell, said by Escudero to be “tough as nails”; freshman Anna Brunstrom from Sweden and two highly regarded recruits: Noelle Porter of San Clemente, No. 12 among players 18 and younger, and Camilla Ohrman, Brunstrom’s partner when they won two national doubles championships in Sweden.

Helgeson said she plans to return to Pepperdine next fall “no matter how I do this summer” and will decide her future after that. Escudero was asked when he thinks she will be able to compete on the pro circuit: “She should be fully ready in one year, next year, after the college nationals.”

Whenever she charts her future, it is certain that tennis will play a large part.

“She likes being a good, tough player,” Escudero said. “She enjoys it, likes being in the limelight. Money is not a big motivation for her. If she doesn’t make it in tennis, she’ll be successful at something else.”

Tennis is still fun, she said, “and I like working at it. If your game flows, it’s very rewarding.

“To keep on winning is the motivation for playing. I don’t have to sacrifice or be disciplined to do it because it’s not a chore to me.”