He Graduates Beyond Being Next Connors : Billy Martin, Once in Tennis’ Fast Lane, Has a New School of Thought at UCLA

Billy Martin--no, not that Billy Martin--roomed with Brian Teacher when the UCLA tennis team played road matches in 1975. They also were doubles partners, but that didn’t exactly make them friends.

Teacher, who went on to a successful professional career, recalled the competitive tension between them.

“One time, he had a bag full of Oreo cookies and I went over and took two,” said Teacher, now in the masters of business administration program at USC. “Billy came over and barked, ‘Oh, Brian, those are my cookies.’ He didn’t want to share anything. Not even his food.”

Yes, the Cookie Monster of UCLA could be difficult, and perhaps it was just such intensity that eventually led to his downfall as a tennis player. But it also has led to his maturation as a man who now sees a world beyond the clay courts, fuzzy balls and tightly strung rackets.

Martin, who was forced to retire from tennis because of the disease dysplasia, a malformation of the hips, has overcome dyslexia, a reading disorder, to continue his education. At 32, he is expected to graduate in June with an economics degree from UCLA, and then plans to join Teacher in the MBA program at USC.

From tennis prodigy to, well, if not scholar, then at least student, has been a long, winding road for Martin, the men’s assistant tennis coach at UCLA since 1983.

He reminisces, but he doesn’t dwell on the past.

Perhaps it is too painful, and only time will numb the pain.

As a teen-ager, Martin had defeated Stan Smith, Raul Ramirez, Tom Gorman and Sandy Mayer, some of the best of their era.

In 1975, Martin, who attended Palos Verdes High School, came to UCLA as one of the world’s most heralded junior players and then won a National Collegiate Athletic Assn. singles championship his freshman season in a memorable five-set victory over George Hardie of Southern Methodist.

He wasn’t a brat a la John McEnroe, just a young, cocky player who demanded perfection from himself and those around him. He made it clear he was attending college to play tennis, not to study.

“Sometimes, I just couldn’t play doubles with him,” said Teacher, now a good friend of Martin’s. “He was so consumed with tennis he just couldn’t relax.”

UCLA’s tennis coach, Glenn Bassett, who first coached Martin at age 16, said: “I never had a more intense player on the court, He overworked. He broke himself down.”

Teacher recalls Martin playing tennis as many as 6 hours a day, then running.

“Even today, nobody trains like that,” Teacher said. “He had an abnormally intense desire to win and play tennis.”

After his sensational freshman season, Martin left UCLA for the pro tour with the kind of marquee value reserved for Jimmy Connors, who also won an NCAA singles title at UCLA as a freshman and then turned pro.

Excellence, however, was the exception in the hardened world of professional tennis. Martin reached his pinnacle in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 1977, where he lost to his friend Vitas Gerulaitis.

Martin mostly wallowed in obscurity as a journeyman pro, ranked about 50th in the world and earning between $50,000 and $100,000 a year. The money was good, but the ranking was not close to what he was used to.

Finally, the congenital hip problem forced him to retire in 1982.

He was born with the condition in which the femur bone does not fit properly into the hip socket. Playing so much tennis made it arthritic, and painful when he moved.

He said it was improperly diagnosed in late 1981, which prolonged his career about 10 months, but also prolonged the pain.

When the pain became unendurable during a team tennis match in a German league so far from home and the glamour he once knew, he had to forfeit. Martin didn’t know it then, but that was the end.

Martin said recently that despite the injury, he wasn’t ready to give up hope or the glory. Now, 7 years later and light-years wiser, he is just glad to be feeling no pain.

“For a couple years, I think I kept thinking something would happen that I would be able to get back out there,” Martin said. “The first couple years I was here (at UCLA), I thought I would do a hip replacement right away and try to get back out there, but my folks and family said, ‘Hey, decide you’ve had a good time with tennis and that’s it.’ At the time, I was only 25. It took me a good couple of years to realize it was over.”

He had surgery in 1984 to help relieve the pain. He considered having a hip replacement operation, which doctors said would last only for 10 to 15 years.

“I didn’t want to be in and out of the hospital every 10 years,” Martin said.

With advancements in medicine, doctors now say the replacements should last about 25 years. So, within the next 2 years, he will have both hips replaced.

He is coming to grips with his disorder and is happy to announce that for the first time he can sit down and relax without pain.

Yet, the frustration is evident. Here is a once-active individual relegated to the sidelines.

“I have no wheels,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Until I have new hips, I am immobile.”

Doctors also discovered during the 1984 operation that Martin has a hyperactive thyroid.

He takes medication for that condition, which has added to his mellowing, he said.

Although the physical handicaps have made it rough, they also have made him stronger in other pursuits. Bassett said that as a coach, Martin has learned the subtleties of handling people.

“His true personality comes out in coaching,” Bassett said. “He is so easygoing. You’ve got to be a little selfish to be a high-caliber player. Billy has got great balance now.”

On the courts at the Los Angeles Tennis Center at UCLA, Martin can be found, racket in hand, working with the No. 1-ranked Bruin players, who play host to No. 5 UC Irvine at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday. He may not be able to run with them, but he still can offer instruction. And he still believes in the work ethic that led to his distinguished amateur career.

Leaving the narrow path of professional tennis, though, has opened up so many more avenues.

“I really was so blinded to other things going on,” Martin said. “It was a shocking experience to find that there are other things more important than tennis, although when you are involved with it, it is hard to believe. But when you’re involved with it, you have to be that way. You grow up when you get off the tour. I’ve matured a lot.”

From the time he was 10, he wanted nothing else out of life than to be the world’s best tennis player.

He lived in River Forest, Ill., where the U.S. Clay Court nationals once were held. The Martins lived three blocks from the club and he became a ball boy during the championships. There, he got to watch the likes of Dennis Ralston and Arthur Ashe, which spurred his interest in the game.

Martin said the Chicago area had an outstanding junior development program, and with proper encouragement, he was on his way to becoming the most dominating junior player of his time.

He soon became the Chicago junior champion and then began traveling to national tournaments each summer with his mother as chaperon and chauffeur.

Tennis also served as an escape from the struggles of school. All he had to do was swing a racket and keep track of the score. The challenge of classroom work was far more frightening.

“I was always a slower reader, slower speller,” he said. “I used to not read because it would take me so long to read a novel. But you need to keep reading and reading and you get faster and faster.

“You can’t be afraid of anything.”

So, once tennis was gone, he had to face the inevitable. He needed an education to continue other endeavors. He wants to run a college tennis program someday. With Bassett, he operates a successful summer camp at Ojai.

Before he could entertain thoughts of being hired as a college coach, however, he needed a degree.

So, he attacked school and dyslexia with the same fervor once reserved for the courts. And now that he is overcoming it, advancing through another phase of his life, he has a deep sense of satisfaction.

“I did it. I’m somewhat proud of that accomplishment,” he said.

That, he well should be.