On the Surface, This Was a Slow Event : Tennis: Sandy courts helped decide what type of players would reach final at Grand Champions.

The biggest success stories of this week’s Newsweek Champions Cup tennis tournament have been today’s finalists, Andrei Chesnokov and Michael Chang. But the biggest story has been Terry Hedges, a.k.a. the Sandman.

Hedges isn’t exactly known here, which probably suits him just fine. His name appears on no draw sheets, nor on any list of tournament officials, sponsors or donors. But his work has found a warm place in the hearts of Chesnokov, Chang and those players here who, when given a choice of surface to play on, would vote for the Florida Everglades.

This week, at the Hyatt Grand Champions, Terry Hedges gave those players their swamp, and they are grateful. The feelings of other players--those who need a faster surface so they might come to the net--toward Hedges’ work slant slightly more toward the unprintable.

Hedges’ company did a recent resurface job on the tournament courts. The job, needed each year because of damage inflicted by concerts and other events held on the center court of the 10,500-seat stadium, was done in December. The mandate given Hedges by Tournament Director Charlie Pasarell, was for “slow, hard courts.”

“That is done,” Pasarell said, “by mixing certain amounts of sand into the surface. It’s probably my fault, because I kept stressing that I wanted slow hard courts. So I think somebody ended up pouring an extra bucket or so of sand in.”

Pasarell said Saturday that he plans, before next year’s tournament, to get together with tournament officials at Scottsdale, Ariz., and Key Biscayne, Fla., where events are held before and after the Champions Cup, and get a standardized surface and court speed.

There he was, out on a secondary court, in front of a gathering of perhaps 200 spectators. For anybody but Jim Pugh, who might lead the ATP Tour in perspective and maturity, it would have been viewed as a sad scene.

It was the semifinals of the doubles, and Pugh, once one of the best-known doubles players in the world, former No. 1 with Rick Leach and winner of Grand Slam titles and Davis Cups, was struggling. He and his partner, Jason Stoltenberg, were in the process of losing, 6-4, 6-1, to the team of Kent Kinnear and Sven Salumaa. Pugh’s serve was broken twice in the final set, including at 15-40 in the final game.

But for Pugh, all is well. “I feel really good,” he said. “It’s so different now. After I took such a large amount of time off, I just enjoy getting any wins, and we got some here this week.”

Pugh stopped playing the tour after the U.S. Open in September. He told longtime partner Leach that, because he knew Leach wanted to play many tournaments and he didn’t want to play that often, that Leach would be best served in finding a new partner, at least for a while. Leach has, and he and Kelly Jones have done well.

Pugh doesn’t have a steady partner, and his doubles ranking was No. 46 coming into this tournament, but he does have his life in the order he wants it.

“My main priority is to get back and enjoy the lifestyle,” he said. “Some people love the travel, the lifestyle. For me, after a while, the life of hotels and restaurants just wasn’t right. Even after winning a Wimbledon title, I just wasn’t as happy as I should have been. So I had to stop for a while, and it was a great period of time in my life.”