Winning Matches Is Secondary for Tennis Showman Bahrami

The tennis ball soared high above center court, taking with it the gaze of more than 1,000 spectators.

Below, Mansour Bahrami seemed to pay it only cursory attention as he moved into position.

He casually tugged at the side of his white shorts with one hand, and as the ball plummeted downward, caught it in his pocket.

Bedlam in the bleachers.

“I don’t practice that at all,” Bahrami said to skeptical reporters. “A ball boy threw a ball to me once and it went in there, so now I do it on purpose.”

Welcome to the Mansour Bahrami Show, now playing in conjunction with the Digital PC Champions tournament at the Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks.

Bahrami, who has had a nomadic and often trying tennis career, was a late addition to the five-day event. The 38-year-old Iranian defeated Tim Gullikson on Thursday before falling to third-seeded Johan Kriek on Friday.

Although the 10th stop on the over-35 Champions tour is headlined by co-founder Jimmy Connors and Swedish star Bjorn Borg, Bahrami, who played in the doubles quarterfinals Friday night, carved out an audience niche with his hustle and antics.

“I love playing tennis but not because I’m earning money,” said Bahrami, who speaks English and French as well as his native Persian. “If I lose in the early rounds at (Sherwood), I don’t make any. I have tennis that is very different from others. Sometimes I see people in the stands who are crying from laughing. I love that.”

Against Gullikson, Bahrami wowed the crowd by hitting a between-the-legs shot while running away from the net, leaping over Gullikson’s errant serves, and undercutting several shots so severely that they dropped over the net and spun back toward his own side of the court.

Later, Bahrami won a point when he faked an overhead shot and, in the same motion, landed a fluttering backhand drop shot in front of Gullikson.

“You’d never see that on the (ATP) tour, but I thought it was quite humorous,” Gullikson said after Bahrami won the match in a third-set tiebreaker. “He’s a character and not a bad tennis player either.”

For years, it was Bahrami who didn’t know what he was going to do next. As a young professional player and a member of Iran’s Davis Cup team from 1975-78, he had a house, a car and the government’s blessing to travel abroad. But the 1978 revolution and the ascent of the Ayatollah Khomeini interrupted Bahrami’s career. “Everything stopped, the clubs closed and there was no more tennis,” he said. “They say it was a capitalist game.”

So in the midst of revolutionary chaos, he played backgammon for more than 10 hours a day and lived off his dwindling savings.

He finally was able to get a passport and visas for travel to Switzerland and France. Taking $2,000, the maximum allowed, Bahrami departed for Nice, France, in August of 1980. He arrived unable to speak French and found no one who would speak to him in either English or Persian.

He figured his money would last 10 days and saw little chance of finding a job. Spying a casino, he tried his luck at the blackjack table, but lost it all in half an hour.

Broke and unable to communicate, Bahrami had confirmed his return flight to Iran when he ran into an Iranian tennis acquaintance.

Through his friend’s connections and the efforts of the French Tennis Federation, Bahrami was allowed to play in several small tournaments and gain part-time employment giving lessons at the Villepinte Tennis Club near Paris.

His tennis skills were undeniable, but the language barrier sometimes limited him to as little as one lesson a week, for which he charged $14. He often went without food, and paid $3 a night to sleep in the basement of a bar.

“There was a bed, but (the basement) was so cold and humid I had to sleep with all my track suits on,” he said. “But I want to try everything to stay in France so I accept not eating.”

The Villepinte club helped Bahrami renew his visa every three weeks until March of 1981, but French authorities eventually told him to declare himself a political refugee or leave the country.

Refusing to label himself politically, Bahrami dodged police daily before surprisingly qualifying for the 1981 French Open. The fairy tale continued, as Bahrami upset Jean-Louis Haillet, a member of France’s Davis Cup team, in his first match before losing to current Champions tour player Mel Purcell in the second round.

Through publicity generated by his appearance at Roland Garros, Bahrami was able to get a one-year green card and continue to play in France. He finally got a visa to travel abroad in 1986 and joined the ATP tour at 30, reaching the doubles final in the 1989 French Open with Eric Winogradsky.

Bahrami now plays nearly every week in exhibition matches with the likes of Boris Becker and Steffi Graf and on the ATP seniors’ tour. He married a French woman, has two sons, and last year played in Iran’s first Davis Cup matches in 15 years, though he can bring himself to visit his homeland for only a week at a time as a result of the harsh political climate. Still, life is good for Bahrami, for whom entertaining is as good as winning.

“I always play this way, and it is an honor to play with Connors and all these guys,” he said. “But I’m not always concentrating because I’m thinking about making people happy and I give away a lot of free points. If I play it straight with no fancy shots and I see people have no fun, it is a loss for me.”

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In Friday’s matches, Bjorn Borg advanced to the semifinals by defeating Mel Purcell, 7-6 (7-3), 6-4; Johan Kriek defeated Bahrami, 7-5, 6-4, and Jose-Luis Clerc defeated Larry Stefanki, 6-2, 6-2. In doubles, Bahrami and Stefanki defeated Ross Case and Leif Shiras, 6-2, 6-4.