He’s Big, but His Game Now Larger Than Life

Tank Kronemann rolled through Ojai again this year, just as he had during the previous three, but there are always newcomers in the audience and on first sighting, Tank’s a lot for the optic nerve to deal with.

“Look at this moose,” one elderly gentlemen exclaimed as he and a friend sat in the bleachers, watching Trevor Kronemann peel off his massive UC Irvine sweat suit.

“He must weigh 280,” the friend replied, almost reverently.

For several minutes there is silence. Kronemann completes his warmups and the tennis match commences. Tank smashes a few forehands. Tank crushes a few serves.

“You know,” the first man says, piping up again, “he’d probably make a lot more money playing football.”

The friend shakes his head.

“I’m not so sure,” he says. “Looks to me like he’s got a pretty good game.”

That, in a nutshell, is the Tank Kronemann viewing experience. The first impression arrives with a snicker, but stick around long enough and you’ll take your place among the converted.

“I hear everything that goes on in the stands. I’m very aware,” Kronemann says. “I catch flak for my size, for the way I play. I hear, daily, ‘You can’t be a tennis player. You’re too big. You’re going to wear down.’

“But I have a chance to be a four-time All-American and only one other guy has ever done that.”

The other guy is Rick Leach, which isn’t bad company for someone who looks like a blond John Belushi and possesses the same sense of humor.

As Kronemann stands at the baseline, as he did during Sunday’s third-set tiebreaker against San Jose State’s Mike Chinchiolo, he cuts an unforgettable figure. Drenched in sweat, his white pullover shirt turns see-through, clinging for dear life to a substantial belly that flops over his belt. A dirt-stained knee brace stretches across a huge left thigh. Scraggly yellow locks billow from beneath a neon green Big Dog surfer cap, its exaggerated, extra-long bill flipped upward in goofball fashion. Yes, America, this is one of your finest collegiate tennis players.

When Kronemann defeated Chinchiolo, 6-3, 3-6, 7-6, it gave him four singles championships in four trips to the Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament. It also gave him a 30-12 record for the 1990 season, which should boost his current No. 18 standing in the NCAA tennis rankings.

For the record, Kronemann is 6-feet-3 and, in season, weighs between 228 and 232 pounds. Off-season, after a summer of mom’s lasagna, Kronemann checks in at 240, although UC Irvine Coach Greg Patton claims it’s closer to 255.

In a sport where 195-pound Boris Becker is considered husky, Kronemann carries a Refrigerator kind of persona. Spectators seem astonished, not only when he runs down a volley, but just by his presence on the court.

Boy, he moves well for his size.

“He’s a big-boned guy in a graceful, lithe sport,” Patton says. “It’d be great if he made it in the pros, because he’d bring a lot of new fans into the sport. A lot of big people see him play and say, ‘Hey, he looks just like me.’ He’s living proof that great things can come in big packages.”

Patton was the one who came up with the nickname Tank.

So, on this year’s Irvine tennis media guide, Patton and Kronemann are pictured together, a toy tank balanced on Kronemann’s racket, underneath the inscription: UCI’s General and The Tank.

A couple of years earlier, when mega-forward Wayne Engelstad played for Bill Mulligan’s basketball team, Patton had another brainstorm. He wanted to dress big Wayne in tennis togs, pose him next to Tank--forming an industrial strength doubles team--and call them The Beasts of the Baseline.

“It would’ve made a great poster,” Patton says.

Kronemann’s strength as a tennis player isn’t difficult to discern. The Tank cranks. “I probably hit as hard as (Andre) Agassi,” Kronemann says, not boastfully. “I grew up with Jim Courier and Pete Sampras. Those guys don’t hit any harder than I do.”

And, rest assured, none of them elicit the same kind of reaction Kronemann does when they unload on a forehand or a serve.

When’s the last time you saw a player hit a tennis ball so hard, people laughed?

With Kronemann, it happens. With a seeming flick of the wrist, Kronemann can pulverize a ball--”BBs out of a cannon” is how Patton describes it--and the ball screams off the racket like a sonic boom. In its own way, it can be as awesome as a Jose Canseco home run. The viewer is left so stunned, so delightfully startled, that the only response he can muster is a nervous giggle.

Kronemann believes this to be his great equalizer. If his game appears better suited for doubles--hell, he is a doubles team--Kronemann maintains that Big Thunder, along with a lot of heart, will make him a top 100 singles player on the pro circuit.

“Last Christmas at Sarasota, I beat Jimmy Brown, who’s No. 80 in the world,” Kronemann says. “Two weeks before that, he beat (Mats) Wilander, 6-0, 6-1.

“I have the type of game that’s real explosive. If I get in a groove for two, three weeks at a time, I can be a top 100 player.

“I don’t care what it takes. If I have to live out of a van and eat sandwiches and scrape and crawl my way to the top, I’m going to do it.”

As Kronemann says, “There are exceptions to the rule. I’m hoping to become the Spud Webb of tennis.”

It’s an odd analogy, but only until you begin to think about it. Webb is a little man making a living in a big man’s game. Kronemann is a big man trying to survive in a little man’s game. Already, Kronemann has changed the lexicon of the sport. At Irvine, for instance, it is now considered a compliment to tell a player he just tanked a match.