Tennis’ Designated Hitter

It’s always a wrench to see a great talent gone to waste. Misused. With so many wanna-bes out there who don’t make it, it’s disillusioning to see a cudda-been who threw it all away.

Take the redheaded kid from Plant City, Fla., a few years back. You’d have to say he had it all. He could run, throw, field and hit with some power. He had “can’t miss” written all over him. Even the Cincinnati Reds, who trained nearby, were intrigued.

You figured this guy would be the next Ryne Sandberg or--who knew?--maybe even a George Brett. He got good wood on the ball, hit to all fields. A little seasoning and 20 clubs would be bidding.

Then, he fell in with the wrong crowd. An old story, right? A downward spiral, lost direction, the skills atrophying. Today, he probably couldn’t hit a curveball if you told him it was coming. He’s only 21 years 5 months old, but already he’s washed up as a ballplayer.

For the baseball fan, it’s as if he stepped off the face of the earth.

But wait a minute, it’s not quite what they think. The “evil” companions he fell in with are not scofflaws or barflies or school dropouts. They’re the tennis Establishment.

Maybe Jim Courier could have become another Pete Rose, but he has done very well anyway. He has become the world’s No. 1 tennis player. Tommy Lasorda might consider it beside the point, but Courier might become another Bill Tilden. Rod Laver.

The challenges are the same. The sport requires deft hand-eye coordination. The ball comes to you fast or curving. Only this time you don’t want to get good wood on it, you want to get the mesh of strings on it. You don’t get three strikes here. And a foul ball is an out.

There is a body of thought holding that tennists are our best athletes. Either tennists or pugilists. Their sports are grueling, stamina-requiring endeavors. In both, you’re on your own. Only in tennis, the opponent is not beating you bloody. At least, not on the outside.

So, tennis players are considerable athletes. This notion has some resistance from truck drivers who have trouble with any sport in which love is a score.

But, a case could be made that tennists are the world’s best. Baseball is played in only a few countries. Football in even fewer. Basketball is just catching on, as is hockey. Boxing is banned in a lot of places. But tennis has had champions from India, Africa, Europe, the Orient and, of course, Australia. It is played in places where they never heard of golf, for instance.

You have to outgun (and outwit) competition from all over the world. Jim Courier’s competitors, at the moment, include a Swede, a Czech, a South African, the usual passel of Aussies, a few Germans, two Russians, a Hollander or two, a Croat, a Swiss, Argentine, Brazilian and a handful of French. When tennis says you are a world champion, you are.

So, did Jim Courier make the right career choice? Obviously. He thinks so.

What kind of a ballplayer does he think he might have been?

“Oh, a Wade Boggs type,” he says.

Put the ball in play. Hit for average. How about Pete Rose? Does he think Pete Rose’s 4,256 hits would have been safe?

“They’d be safe,” Courier says, laughing.

Baseball has its triple crown. The man who leads in homers, runs batted in and average is a major standout.

Tennis has its Grand Slam. You have to win Wimbledon and the U.S., French and Australian opens in a calendar year. Courier is the only guy who has a chance this year, because he won the Australian Open.

Does he see a Grand Slam in his future? “I don’t think about that,” he says quickly. “I just play every tournament, every match as it comes up. I don’t look ahead. I think if it happens, it happens. You can’t will it.”

There hasn’t been a Grand Slam winner since Rod Laver in 1969, not a triple crown winner since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.

Jim Courier won the Newsweek Champions Cup at the Grand Champions resort in Indian Wells last week the way Joe Louis used to win his fights. He lost only one set, and that was a tiebreaker to Marc Rosset. He held serve more than 90% of the time all week. As soon as he had his man on the ropes, he moved in for the kill.

He won his semifinal match against fifth-seeded Michael Chang in 1 hour 58 minutes--Chang usually has you 4-4 in the first set in that time--and he took only 1:59 minutes to dispose of South Africa’s Wayne Ferreira in the best-of-five-sets final.

Courier used a killer forehand to topple his opposition and played with the confidence of a guy who has his own deck and a mirror behind his opponent’s hand.

Baseball might have lost a great prospect. But tennis might have gained a greater one. Instead of gobbling up ground balls, he’s gobbling up ground strokes. It’s still a ball game. He’s still a contact hitter.

Of course, he got $235,000 for winning Sunday. A pretty good week. But lots of ballplayers get that a week nowadays. And they don’t have to win. In fact, they might go 0 for 20 and still get it. In tennis, if you go 0 for 20, you have to hitch a ride home.