LEACH AND PUGH : IN THE LATEST WAVE OF DOUBLES TALENT, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIANS FIND THAT BEING BEST ISN’T ALWAYS ENOUGH

Leach and Pugh. Sounds like a law firm. But, after all, it’s the same with all the good doubles teams of tennis. Listen to them. Casal and Sanchez. Flach and Seguso. Jarryd and Fitzgerald. Noah and Forget. These are names reeking of gray flannel and legal pads. You don’t know whether they’re going to serve a double fault or a subpoena.

But while a court is where Rick Leach and Jim Pugh do their work, it is also the place where they go about their business virtually unnoticed, which is kind of ironic. After all, you figure you win a couple of Grand Slam titles and the Masters and, hey, it’s time for a music video, man.

Only it hasn’t quite worked out that way for a couple of Southern California kids who grew up only a couple of waves removed from the ocean and look more like the grown-up cast of “The Wonder Years” than the best doubles team in the world.

Is that what they are? It sure seems that way, although the field could be judged kind of wide open right now as tennis’ second Grand Slam event, the French Open, approaches. But Leach, 24, and Pugh, 25, are at an age when they may see things differently right about now. The world is their croissant.

They’ve already won Down Under in Melbourne in the year’s first Grand Slam tournament, the Australian Open, so now, they’re aiming for the stars.

First, they’re trying for the Grand Slam of doubles--winning all four of tennis’ majors.

Can they do it?

“Since we won the first one, we’re the only ones who have a chance,” Pugh said.

Then, they’re going to attempt something really difficult--make doubles a big deal.

Can they do it?

Well, they’ve probably got a better shot at the Grand Slam.

On the Grand Prix tour, the only important game is singles. The vast majority of the prize money, the attention and the best players are all concentrated in the singles. For instance, when Boris Becker won last year’s Masters singles title, he got $285,000. When Leach and Pugh won the Masters doubles title a week later, they each got $36,000.

What this means is that while Leach-Pugh team may rule, their kingdom is very small. There is even some question as to how good they would be if the top-ranked singles players concentrated on doubles.

“I don’t think they’re the best,” said Leach’s father, Dick, the USC tennis coach. “McEnroe and anybody are the best. McEnroe is still the best doubles player to come along in the last 15-20 years. Let’s face it. The best players in the world don’t play singles.”

Another view is offered by Jim Pugh, concerning his son and Dick Leach’s son: “I kind of doubt if Rick and Jim would be enjoying the same success if players like McEnroe and Edberg and Wilander would play more doubles--I kind of doubt it. What they’ve done is nice, but . . . “

So much for family ties. Yet what they’ve done appears pretty remarkable, no matter who wasn’t playing. Last year, in only their first full year together, they won seven titles, including the Australian Open. They got to the quarterfinals of the French before losing to Anders Jarryd and John Fitzgerald and they got to the finals of the U.S. Open before losing to food poisoning.

Actually, Leach got sick after eating a seafood sandwich on the grounds at Flushing Meadow, so Leach-Pugh was forced to default to the Spanish duo of Sergio Casal and Emilio Sanchez.

“He still hasn’t forgiven me for that one,” Leach joked.

They got their revenge in the Masters doubles tournament at the Royal Albert Hall in London when they defeated Casal and Sanchez in a four-set final. The new year began the same way the old one ended. Leach and Pugh successfully defended their title in Melbourne and have since added tournament victories in Scottsdale, Ariz., Singapore and the Tournament of Champions at Forest Hills, N.Y.

Next is the French. Can they keep it together? For that matter, how did they get it together in the first place?

When little Jimmy Pugh was 5, his dad put a racket in his hands and took him out to the courts. Not long after that, Jimmy’s accuracy convinced the elder Pugh that he was a pretty special toddler.

“I’d bend over and pick up balls and he could hit me in the rear end every single time,” Pugh said.

“He had an uncanny ability to return. I’d make him run from one side of the court to the other without any rest. He kind of had what I called a ‘sixth sense.’ As he got older, he had this quiet determination to be good.”

Jimmy got older and better and he also got bigger. He wanted to be called Jim, not Jimmy, which was fine except for the confusion it caused with his dad. Big Jim and Little Jim was all right until Little Jim grew to 6-foot-4, which was bigger than Big Jim.

What are they called now?

“The Wrinkled and the Unwrinkled,” said the former Big Jim, who was himself an accomplished athlete.

Jim Pugh was a basketball and tennis star at Washington High School, then went to USC where he was once again a basketball star. In 1963, Pugh joined a six-man amateur indoor volleyball team from Long Beach. One of his teammates was Keith Erickson, a UCLA basketball and volleyball star and later an National Basketball Assn. standout.

“Every once in a while, I’d ask Jim how good little Jimmy could be at tennis,” Erickson said. “Jim always thought back then that Jimmy could be one of the top tennis players in the world. I didn’t know how much of that was prejudiced because of bloodlines. I guess he wasn’t too prejudiced after all.”

Jimmy developed into an accomplished junior player. He was often in the finals of junior tournaments. Many times he would play a kid from Laguna Beach. His name was Ricky Leach.

Like Jimmy Pugh, Ricky started playing when he was 5 as a result of his dad’s influence. Dick Leach was a tennis pro in San Marino and little Ricky liked to tag along and play the whole day. When Ricky was 9, Dick Leach began including Ricky in doubles matches with adults.

“Because of that, he was able to learn the game of doubles,” Dick Leach said. “For a lot of kids, doubles are not important because the emphasis is on singles.”

Ricky Leach grew to 6-2. He played for his father at USC and he did very well. When he turned pro in 1987, Leach had become the first four-time All-American in singles and doubles at USC with two titles in each.

Pugh, an All-American at UCLA in 1984, left school after two years and turned pro. Not until two years later, though, while Leach was still at USC, did the former junior foes decide to join forces. It was in Raleigh, N.C., in a tiny $25,000 Challenger Series event when Leach wanted to change from his normal partner, Tim Pawsat.

Leach asked Pugh. Pugh said OK. They won the tournament.

Leach asked Pugh to play doubles with him in a five-tournament Satellite Series in Hawaii. Pugh said OK. They won all five tournaments.

No matter how nice the victories felt, they were kind of unsatisfying. None of the Challenger Series tournaments could be confused with Grand Prix events, where the serves are hit harder, the volleys angle sharply and the players are better. That was the first time the rulers surveyed their kingdom and knew how small it was.

“The minor leagues,” Leach said.

Leach and Pugh entered their first Grand Prix event in 1987 at San Francisco. They lost in the first round.

“We thought, ‘Oh yeah, you can win the small ones, but the big ones are tough,’ ” Pugh said.

Leach and Pugh entered their second Grand Prix event at Scottsdale. They won.

“That’s when we thought, ‘Yeah, we can do this on a top level,’ ” Pugh said.

So they committed to doubles for the rest of the year, just to see how things would go. Their third Grand Prix event was the 1988 Australian Open. They won.

“It was a big shock,” Pugh said. “After that, we felt we could beat anyone.”

Jack Kramer won six Grand Slam doubles titles--two Wimbledons and four U.S. Opens, three of those with Ted Schroeder as his partner. The secret to good doubles is not that difficult, at least to talk about. Doing it, well, that’s another matter.

“The excellent teams are the ones that seem to be the best returning serve,” Kramer said. “The person who gets the other person to hit the ball up so his partner can volley it away. Yes, the good team has always had a good defensive returner who puts the ball in play.”

As far as Leach-Pugh goes, the division of labor is just as Kramer described it. Pugh, right-handed and playing the ad court, is known for his steady return of serve. Leach, left-handed and playing the deuce court, takes the balls down the middle and volleys the ball away.

Sound simple? It isn’t. But Leach-Pugh are an unusual amalgam of shotmaking. Pugh hits two-handed from both sides, forehand and backhand, and Leach his a two-handed backhand. This means that for three of the four Leach-Pugh groundstrokes are two-handed for greater control.

Dick Leach said they are going to be a better doubles team as soon as they improve in a few areas.

“Jimmy is going to have to improve his second serve and get a little more consistency on his volleys,” Leach said. “He makes the tough volleys, but it’s the easy ones he misses. Rick, he needs to return better on grass and clay. He returns fine when he knows where the balls are going to bounce.

“He also needs to be more aggressive at the net cross-court. He doesn’t want to screw things up, so he’s a little conservative. But when you can volley like that, you have to take more balls.”

To get ready for the French, Leach and Pugh decided to play at Forest Hills on the green clay that is firmer and faster than the red clay at Roland Garros.

Once they get there, Leach and Pugh will face a number of obstacles. Some of them will be people. Sanchez may wind up playing with his brother, Javier, instead of Casal. But Leach and Pugh will be buoyed by their victory over at least half the team in the Masters. Ken Flach and Robert Seguso, the U.S. Davis Cup doubles team? Leach and Pugh are 3-0 lifetime against them.

“If they lose a couple of (Davis Cup) matches, and we continue to do well, then I think we’ll have a chance to play,” Leach said.

Tom Gorman, the U.S. Davis Cup captain, said Leach and Pugh are just going to have to wait their turn.

“In the overall picture, I’m in as good a position that any Davis Cup captain has been in in a long, long time because we definitely have two doubles teams that are definitely world-class caliber,” Gorman said. “But (Leach and Pugh are) in kind of a Catch-22 situation. Well, you need experience to play Davis Cup and you can’t get experience when you don’t play.

“Right now, Flach and Seguso are better and you have to stay with that team,” he said.

However, the elder Pugh isn’t so sure. Leach and Pugh could have gotten that U.S. Davis Cup experience if Gorman had used them in the first-round match with Paraguay. “I can see the position (Gorman) is in, but you have to have a little guts sometime,” Pugh said. “I mean, what’s right is right.”

In the meantime, the two California kids are going to go about their business. They may wind up smearing their shirts with clay, then get grass stains all over their shorts. They may even win the next couple of Grand Slams, and wouldn’t that be a nice experience, even if it isn’t the Davis Cup.

“Look, we’re not going to make a big deal out of it, but if we can win the French, we’ll be on our way to a Grand Slam,” Leach said. “We know it’s really tough. But I just think that we’re capable of beating any team in the world. So obviously we have a shot.”

Pugh shook his head in agreement. Anything his partner says goes double with him.