Age Does Little to Douse Davis’ Competitive Flame : Senior tennis: A fistful of national titles keeps Encino man playing with a purpose.

Pity poor Ed Lintz, overmatched and overweight, the victim of a clever foe.

Lintz, a last-minute entrant in the 1989 U. S. Tennis Assn. Grass-Court Championships, was scheduled to play Gordon Davis in the tournament’s first round. Davis had traveled 3,000 miles to Philadelphia and had no intentions of making an immediate U-turn back to Encino.

In response to Lintz’s noticeable paunch, Davis punched. Dink after dink fell. Deliver drop shots until he drops, Davis reasoned.

It worked. Davis won the first set, 6-0, and was winning, 3-0, in the second when Lintz wheezed for mercy: “Do you have to keep drop-shotting? I’ve just had operations on my back and neck.”

“You’re out here aren’t you?” shot back Davis, whose tall, lithe build was in sharp contrast to that of his portly opponent. Davis then broke the poor fellow’s spirit with five consecutive aces and, ultimately, won the match without surrendering a game.

A tough racket, tennis.

“I’m known for being very intense,” Davis explained. “I’m not a smiley, good guy. I’m just concentrating. The more serious the match becomes, the more serious I become.”

Davis, 54, doesn’t appear to be the typical heavy. A retired stockbroker who coaches tennis privately, he is affable and glib. Perhaps his friendly demeanor compensates for his fiery attitude when challenged. Although he’s relentless on the court, he unabashedly admits the corporate life was too intense. “The business got tougher and tougher and I didn’t,” he says.

Few seniors are tougher when armed with a racket. His precise shot placement and seemingly effortless footwork frustrate opponents. Relying on a tenacious serve-and-volley game, Davis defeated Bill Roberti, 6-2, 6-0, Friday in the 55’s division of the Southern California Tennis Assn. Senior Sectional Championships at the Racquet Center of Universal City. He advanced to today’s semifinal round.

Davis enjoyed moderate success during his teens and early 20s, but really made a name for himself six years ago when he began to play national senior tournaments. He was raised in Santa Monica and, in the late 1950s, played at USC. He advanced to the quarterfinals of the NCAA singles tournament during his senior year. After college, he turned pro but stopped touring after a brief stint on the East Coast grass-court circuit.

Serious competitive play abated for Davis until his recent renaissance. As a senior, he has netted five quarter-sized gold tennis balls, symbolic of four national singles titles and one doubles championship. At 51, he was ranked No. 1 in the 45’s and won the national hard-court tournament in that division.

He’s not shy about his success. The license plate on his black, late-model Mercedes-Benz reads “3XNO1US,” refering to the three seasons he was the top-ranked player in nation in his age division.

Squeezing accolades onto a license plate would be tougher for Scott Davis, Gordon’s son. An outstanding junior player who competed for Stanford, Scott is now a professional ranked in the low 40’s in the world. As a junior, he won 24 national titles--a record that was broken in 1988 by Al Parker, a University of Georgia standout.

The younger Davis says if any tennis pressure existed in his childhood, it came on the court during father-son tournament matches, not behind closed doors.

“We’re both pretty intense and a lot of time we wouldn’t play as well because we were both so up-tight,” said Scott, 27.

Scott might have more natural talent, but Gordon has a keen ability to concentrate. In fact, Gordon places such a high premium on focusing his mind that he refuses to talk to an opponent--even if it’s a close friend--before a match.

Lenny Lindborg, who owns a tennis club in Huntington Beach, has played Davis several times. Without rackets, the two are friends; with rackets, it’s war.

“We have to have an umpire every time we play,” Lindborg said. “I don’t make the calls right away. I look at the marks on the court and it drives him up the wall.”

One challenge match between the two got so heated, Davis penned Lindborg a conciliatory letter:

Dear Lenny,

I want to apologize for my behavior during our match. I felt bad for you and your friends at the club.

I sincerely like you very much. Hope this won’t interfere with our future relationship.

Your old friend,

Gordon.

Impressed at the act of sportsmanship, Lindborg thanked Davis for the note upon their next meeting. Quick as a half-volley, Davis quipped: “Give it back to me, I’ll need it again.”

Perhaps the wit of a former client rubbed off on Davis: He once coached Chevy Chase. Other celebrities, too, have taken lessons from Davis, who teaches about 20 hours a week. Once, a smoking Davis groundstroke sent Dinah Shore on a sentimental journey--it knocked her into yesterday.

Longtime mixed-doubles partners, Davis and Shore were playing another team at the entertainer’s home. Davis returned a lob with a crushing backhand that drilled Shore in the back of the head. Shore, standing at the net, was woozy but not injured.

“The ball was going about a thousand miles an hour,” Davis recalled. “She had a lot of hair--that saved her. It scared the hell out of me. If she would have turned around, she would have needed plastic surgery.”

And Davis would have needed a good lawyer.

As it stands, Davis is the judge, jury and executioner in his matches. Even younger, quicker opponents have trouble handling him.

“They kind of tear my body apart but its still amazing they don’t beat me,” he said. “They don’t put the ball in the court too much. They just spray it around.

“If I was 27 and I couldn’t beat somebody twice my age, I might quit. These kids keep coming back for more.”

And Davis keeps delivering.