They Can’t Tear Him Off Court : Tennis: Chesnokov re-injures his ribs during the first set against Chang, but refuses to quit in 6-3, 6-4, 7-5 loss.

Strike another blow for international relations. Right here in the California desert, in the heart of capitalistic glitter and opulence, a Russian tennis player from Moscow lost a match and still won the day Sunday.

With a chance to shortchange a crowd of Americans, many of whom had paid the equivalent of lots of rubles to see the final of this Newsweek Champions Cup Tournament, Andrei Chesnokov turned goodwill ambassador.

In what turned out to be the final game of the first set of his best-of-five-set match against Michael Chang, Chesnokov chased down a wide shot to his right and stretched to make the return. Unknown to most was that Chesnokov had injured his right rib cage here earlier on Thursday, after he upset the world’s No. 1 player, Jim Courier.

“I went swimming,” he recalled Sunday, after his 6-3, 6-4, 7-5 loss to Chang. “I turn in the pool this way (he demonstrated a move to his right) and it hurt, and I think then it is maybe serious.”

When he stretched for the shot against Chang, it got very serious. He doubled over at the baseline, tried to walk around a bit to shake the sting and then barely managed to loop in a couple of soft serves that Chang crunched back for a service break and a 6-3 first set.

During the break, Todd Snyder, the ATP tour trainer, was summoned, and Dana Loconto, the chair umpire, gave Chesnokov a three-minute injury timeout. Snyder then sprayed the injured area with a pain-deadening substance and wrapped tape all around Chesnokov’s upper torso. But just before Chesnokov was to head back onto the court, he doubled over in apparent pain in his courtside chair.

For the sellout crowd of 10,500, plus the TNT cable network audience, the reality of the situation was clear, especially in this day and age where the perception is of high-paid, low-pain-threshold athletes. Chesnokov could easily have quit, sending lots of people prematurely to the exits or to their remote channel changers.

Said Loconto: “I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. When he first came off, I was trying to get him to take an injury timeout, but he said he didn’t think the trainer could help him.”

Said Snyder: “He could have quit at any time. When I got out there, the muscle was in spasms, and I tried to stabilize it as fast as I could. You know when you go to a rib joint and eat ribs? Well, that’s exactly the part he had torn, and he was in considerable pain.”

And said Charlie Pasarell, the tournament director, who had lots to lose in fan satisfaction and general public relations if Chesnokov quit: “I’ll tell you, there would have been a few players on today’s tour who wouldn’t have gone on in that situation.”

But Chesnokov got off the chair, immediately broke Chang’s serve, chased down every shot he could in the next two sets and even fought off two match points before losing.

So why did he walk back on when he could have so easily walked off?

“If this was first round, maybe I stop,” Chesnokov said, “but in the finals, that is not very good for the crowd. Everybody wait for the finals, and then there will be no finals here for another one year, so that’s the reason that I play to the end.”

So, in this age of player strikes and athletic soreheads and career-threatening toenail rips, there emerged, for one afternoon at least, a Great American Hero, Moscow Division.

Said Fred Stolle, the longtime Australian champion and current network tennis announcer: “I had great admiration for him. He is tough, very fit. He’s not like a lot of these guys who play a lot of exhibitions. Chessy goes to lots of tournaments and just plays.”

In the awards ceremony, comedian Alan King, a tournament co-chairman, presented Chesnokov with his $70,000 runner-up check and said, “Now he is going back to Moscow and buy it.”

It was a fitting capitalistic thought on this day, when one athlete really gave American fans their money’s worth.