Courier Moves to Head of Higueras’ Class : Tennis: Former Spanish clay standout did a job on Chang. Now he is singled out for his work with big-hitting Floridian.

It wasn’t long ago that a Spaniard named Jose Higueras was matching strokes on the tennis courts of the world with all the best players. His reputation was secure: Put Jose on a clay court and block out the next six hours.

He played Davis Cup for Spain for eight years, won 15 titles on the tour--most of them on surfaces similar to quicksand--and gained respect from opponents and fans alike for his backcourt game and steely resolve.

Now, at 38, only six years removed from his last swing on the pro tour, Higueras is fast acquiring respect as somebody who can effectively preach what he once practiced.

It started with his tutoring of Michael Chang.

“I got a call from his father when Michael was about 15,” Higueras recalled Sunday at the Newsweek Champions Cup. “Michael had just lost badly in a junior tournament to a Swedish player, and they wanted somebody to work with him. And as soon as I saw him, I was so impressed with his basic game that I told him I thought some day he could win the French Open. I just didn’t think he would win it so soon. When he did that, it stunned me.”

Indeed, when Chang stunned the entire tennis world by winning the French in 1989, the role that Higueras played in coaching the youngster from Placentia was widely discussed.

Now, Higueras is working on success story No. 2.

His current student, Jim Courier of Dade City, Fla., won the Newsweek tournament Sunday, taking an exciting five-set victory over the hottest player on the pro tour, Guy Forget of France. And that, once again, drew attention to the teacher.

“He called in the fall of last year and ended up coming here to Palm Springs for much of the month of November and part of December,” Higueras said. “We worked for about four hours a day. Lots of conditioning and work on shot selection.

“What I saw right away was a young man with a big serve and a big forehand--the two most important strokes in tennis--but with a need to work on the backhand and to learn how to slice it. So we worked and worked.”

Higueras, who has lived in the Palm Springs area off and on for the past 10 years and who settled in the area for good after quitting the tour in 1985, said Courier has returned a couple of times this year to work out between tournaments.

And Courier, after winning the title, singled out Higueras for thanks during the trophy presentation on center court. Later, in the news conference, Courier added that he was happy that he had scored his biggest victory to date in Higueras’ hometown, and in a tournament that Higueras won in 1983.

“This was by far my best week ever in tennis,” he said, “And it was kind of nice that it was here.”

Courier, 20, has been approaching greatness for a couple of years. He is among the successful products of Nick Bollettieri’s tennis academy in Florida, but he also has seemed unable to go beyond whatever victories he can achieve through simply outslugging his opponent. He appeared to be a top-20 slugger but only a top-50 player. Until very recently.

“My theory is that you hit the ball as hard as you can every time you are in position to do so,” Higueras said. “If you are not in perfect position to do that, then you don’t.

“With Jim, we worked on how you have to hit the ball more than once or twice to get the point. Sometimes, it takes 15 strokes to get the point. And if that is what it takes, that is what you must do.”

Higueras said that what he saw in Sunday’s final pleased him greatly.

“Jim is a very strong personality,” Higueras said. “But he stayed very calm today. We have talked about the best way to perform, about how you think better when you stay calm. You stay calm and you learn. When you don’t stay calm and you lose, you don’t learn why, because you don’t think, you just get angry.”

Higueras also said that Courier’s victory, impressive as it was, was not the only measure of his recent progress.

“First, I thought it was remarkable when he was down, two sets to one and two-love in the fourth set, and broke back to stay in the match. He just stayed calm,” Higueras said. “Then, when he got it into a fifth set, as far as I was concerned, that was as good as a win.

“In the end, I just thought it was a hell of a match. Both players played like champions, and the real winner was the crowd.”

If you asked Courier, however, he would have said he was the real winner, both of the match and in his selection of a teacher.

“After my second set in the (Andre) Agassi match this week, it was like all the adrenaline stopped flowing to my brain and everything just clicked,” Courier said. “For once, I started working my way through matches, instead of banging my way through.”

Which is similar to Higueras’ approach to his new life as a tennis instructor.

“I realized, not so long ago, that tennis is what I know best,” he said. “So I better keep doing it.”