Noah’s Career Ending

After all this time, there still is the image of Yannick Noah bent over the copper-colored clay court in Paris, the wild excitement in his dark eyes and the cheers ringing in his ears. He was a victor, a champion, a hero -- already a star, but on the threshold of a monumental breakthrough that might make him a legend. That was in 1983.

“That was long ago,” Noah said.

He had just become the first Frenchman in 37 years to win the French Open, by far the most spectacular victory of a checkered career that appears to be coming to an end. When he remembers the triumphant moment, Noah says the biggest difference between then and now is “my hairstyle.”

He won the French with close-cropped hair. These days, he has returned to the dreadlocks that long have been his trademark although, at 29, his grace and skill and interest are fading, like a whisper.

When Noah competes in the Norstar Bank Hamlet Cup Challenge in Jericho, N.Y., beginning Tuesday, he will be overshadowed by the likes of Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg. They lead the cast of 16 players while Noah, his ranking having plunged to No. 24, will be preparing for what may be his last U.S. Open.

He has been bothered by tendinitis in his knees the last two years, forcing him to curtail his schedule and resulting in a fall from a ranking that reached No. 4 in 1986. He won just one tournament last year, in Milan, Italy, hasn’t won any this year, and the frustration keeps building.

“It’s not as much fun, definitely, because I’m working as hard as I used to, probably even more,” said Noah, who was runner-up to Andre Agassi in last year’s Hamlet Cup Challenge. “And the result is, I’m not as good as I used to be, and it’s no fun at all.”

That has led him to consider retiring at the end of the year. “I don’t want to rush things,” he said. “I just want to make sure I’m making the decision I want, not what other people want. I want to make my own decision.”

He always was among the most sensitive and complex players on the tour, driven from his home in Paris following his French Open victory because of the excruciating pressure he faced as a national hero. He decided to live in Manhattan, which made him possibly the only person in history to seek solitude in New York.

He sometimes rode the subways to Forest Hills and Flushing Meadow. He enchanted the crowds with his acrobatic play long before Becker popularized the style, and he made headlines one night at the Open six years ago when he raced to the baseline, his back to the net, and paddled a return between his legs.

“I’m happy with the things I’ve done,” he said. “As far as what I wanted to do with my life from 20 to 30, I’m happy. I’ve done some things. I’ve had a lot of experiences besides tennis. I made some choices between playing matches and doing other things, and most of the time I spoiled myself doing those other things because that’s the way I am. I love to spoil myself.”

He did whatever he wanted. When a photograph of Noah laying on the beach appeared in the newspapers when other players were racing for flights to play in the next tournament halfway around the world, he didn’t care.

As a pure talent, he was compared to Ilie Nastase, who also likes to spoil himself, but Noah’s great misfortune is that he was a contemporary of Lendl and John McEnroe. He had to be satisfied so often with being runner-up and, the truth be known, he was satisfied with it.

He’s played tennis so long and now he wants to take the time to do other things.

“I just want to go somewhere else,” he said. “Just basically take off in a boat. I’m really looking forward to that. After three, four years going around the world on a boat, I think it’s a different pace that would be nice, and then I could think about what I want to do.

“You see, I don’t think I ever decided I wanted to become a tennis player. It just happened this way. It was an accident. Now, I’m going to have to make the first decision I have ever made, you know, as a man ... I’ve missed a few things. I’ve never been to school. I never learned some things. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to learn, but I’m definitely going to go.”

He could take philosophy courses, he said, or religion. He might play music. “A lot of things,” he said. “Things I haven’t done before, things that are fun, new, interesting.

“Different.”