Grossman Wins, Releases Pain : Tennis: After upsetting Fernandez, she tells of her late father’s overly strict training on Ohio farm.

It’s a long way from a concrete court in a barn in Ohio to a victory over the ninth-seeded player in the third round of the U.S. Open, but Ann Grossman made that leap here Friday. And when she was finished, she took the occasion to purge herself of a few demons.

Grossman, from Grove City, Ohio, upset Mary Joe Fernandez, 6-4, 6-4. Fernandez, fighting back from recent abdominal surgery, had struggled to get past Patty Fendick in the second round and simply couldn’t cope with Grossman’s speed and strength.

Grossman has been on a roll this summer, getting her ranking up to No. 36 with impressive performances that included a victory over Martina Navratilova in Manhattan Beach and a run all the way to the final of that tournament, before losing to Amy Frazier.

Grossman, who lived for a while in the South Bay area of Los Angeles and still trains there frequently, had told reporters during the Manhattan Beach tournament a little about her days growing up on the farm in Ohio, where her father, Bill, pushed her to train and play and excel. She joked then about hitting the ball between the cows and the pigs.

But Friday, after her emotional triumph here, she was equally emotional and surprisingly candid while expanding on her late father and the deep effect he had on her.

“I lost my dad three years ago,” she said. “And he was really hard on me. I used to go out on the court and if I missed one shot, I would freak out. . . . I really did hate myself when I was growing up because tennis was everything to my dad, and if I won, it was great and if I didn’t, I was, like, nothing.

“Now, I’ve gone back and gotten the anger out from my dad, and for me, he did so much. . . . I wouldn’t be here if he didn’t push me. They have to push, but they have to know when to stop, and that’s difficult for a parent and it’s kind of scary.

“When I have a kid, it’s going to be tough, but--so what I’ve done is gotten out of a lot of anger, so when I go on the court, all those bad memories don’t come back to haunt me.

“And now, I’m free.”

Grossman said that her father believed in her working on the tennis court six hours a day, that he “abused” her verbally all the time, but that he simply didn’t know another way.

And what would her father have said if he had been here Friday?

“I don’t know,” she said. “He’s watching right now . . . he probably wouldn’t know what to say.”