No Love for School, Prep Star Will Study on Court : St. Monica High’s Michael Joyce would rather be on the pro tour than in the classroom.

Spare Michael Joyce the lecture on the benefits of a college education. The teachers at St. Monica’s High have already tried.

Joyce, a junior, has decided he’s not going to college. Probably never will.

“I don’t like school that much,” he said, smiling. “I hate it. I get really bored.”

Lectures on the benefits of higher education might not inspire the 17-year-old from Beverly Hills, but the events of last weekend do.

Joyce advanced to the semifinals of the Adidas Invitational Tennis Championships at Indian Wells on Saturday--further than any other junior in the tournament’s nine-year history. The event is composed mainly of college players who intend to turn pro. The champion wins a wild-card berth in the $1-million Newsweek Champions Cup in March.

The tournament was another milestone in the rapidly blossoming career of Joyce, ranked third in the U.S. Tennis Assn. boys 18-and-under division. He is a member of the USTA National Team and plans to travel to Florida in March to play in his first series of pro satellite tournaments.

At that point, school will fall by the wayside for Joyce. He might not even return for his senior year. His father, a film producer who rooms with him during most of his tournaments, understands.

“I hired a lot of kids out of USC, UCLA,” Michael Sr. said. “A lot of kids went a lot further who didn’t have educations. If he doesn’t make it, he can put a tenth of his energy into a film production job and be a success.”

Judging by his accomplishments on the court, Joyce might not have to rely on a job in his father’s industry.

Last November, Joyce, then 16, defeated Michael Flanagan in five sets to win the 18’s of the Indoor Nationals at Dallas. The victory was particularly sweet because Flanagan is a Dallas native, and the 300 fans watching knew it. Joyce was an outsider having one of his first experiences with a heavily partisan crowd.

“Whenever I got a point, it was quiet,” Joyce said. “Every time he’d get a point, they’d go crazy. It scared me. . . . When I won the match, I heard a few claps. Then a few more.”

He might have been scared, but he was not rattled. Perhaps that is a testimonial to the peculiar coaching techniques of Robert Lansdorp, who has been Joyce’s mentor for eight years.

Lansdorp taught Joyce to weather the elements by insisting that he practice outside on teeth-chattering cold days, and windy, rainy days that would shear the fuzz off the tennis balls and leave Joyce’s spiked, Boris Becker-type red hair shellacked to his scalp.

In order to improve the youngster’s concentration while hitting ground strokes, Lansdorp would rally with Joyce, who counted backward in his head from 100 by threes.

The two would play games to 21 points and, without fail, Joyce contends, Lansdorp would cheat in the stretch by calling Joyce’s close shots out. It was another mind-strengthening ploy. It would frustrate Joyce so much that once, when he was 12, he rebelled.

“He called the ball out that I thought was in,” said Lansdorp, who speaks in a thick Dutch accent. “I questioned it and he was rude to me. The tone of his voice. I gave him a spanking and said: ‘You get the hell out of here, boy.’ He hated me, he told his father.

“He came back the next time, and we’ve been good buddies ever since.”

Joyce has parlayed that friendship into victories. He has also won a lot of fans.

Peering intently through a chain-link fence during one of Joyce’s preliminary matches in Dallas was Pepperdine Coach Allen Fox. Predictably, Joyce was dismantling another overmatched foe.

“Within about three shots, I almost fell over I was enjoying it so much,” Fox said. “I haven’t been that impressed with a kid in a long time. He was a different animal.

“He was playing quite a good player and utterly dissecting him. Within three or four shots off the base line, he’d have the guy all tangled up. Very accurate and very cunning.”

That strategy has served Joyce well. He often resorted to craftiness and precise shot placement as a youth to handle older, stronger competition. At 5-foot-8 and 135 pounds, he has better luck making an opponent stab in futility at a passing shot than burning a string-stinging smash by him.

Besides, the precision game can be equally nasty.

“He’s such a surgeon,” said Pat Puccinelli, who has tutored Joyce on his serve and volley for a year. “He cuts you and watches you bleed. He’s just ruthless and gets a terrific sense of self-gratification in doing that.”

By that description, Joyce sounds less like a surgeon and more like Dr. No--as in, “There is no way I can hold my ground with this 17-year-old.”

A sentiment expressed, no doubt, by throngs of frustrated players who have been whipped by him. Even adequate training partners are tough to come by for Joyce. It’s not like he can grab the kid next-door to return a few serves. In fact, he rarely uses the court in his back yard. He does have a few partners and occasionally will go to a local club and hit with a touring pro making a stopover in Los Angeles.

Joyce has a rigorous nightly workout regimen that includes three hours of tennis and two hours of jogging and weight training. The schedule understandably puts a crimp in his social life.

“My friends say: ‘You’d rather play tennis than go out?’ One day, when I’m really good, I’ll be going out a lot more than those guys.”

That type of determination was apparent early. Once, after a day in kindergarten, Joyce returned home distraught. He was left out of a soccer match during recess.

Concerned, Jane Joyce tried to soothe her son’s bruised ego.

“It’s OK, Mom,” Michael said. “I made my own team and beat them all.”