Tu Perseveres Despite Bumps in Road : Tennis: She has moved up 517 spots in 9 1/2 months to a No. 119 world ranking, but her coach says she is destined to be No. 1.

A year ago Coach Bill McClain said Meilen Tu, his most-prized student at the Warner Center Club, had the talent to be among the world’s top 30 professionals.

Today, McClain goes beyond that assessment. He now thinks the Northridge teen-ager, who turned pro last Oct. 31, can be No. 1.

Now 9 1/2 months later, Tu has bolstered her world ranking by 517 points. She started out No. 636 and, with no major victories, she has moved up to No. 119.

Tu, 17, has already earned $62,466 while barely scratching the surface of her potential.

But after watching Tu lose to Italy’s Rita Grande, 6-2, 3-6, 6-2 while hampered by a pulled leg muscle in the first round of the $430,000 Toshiba Classic in Carlsbad two weeks ago, McClain discovered she was far from her potential.

“I had my brochure covered with notes about what she was doing wrong,” said McClain, 57, a Warner Center teaching pro who spent 19 years coaching in the NCAA at South Carolina, Alabama and Southern Methodist.

McClain hadn’t seen much of Tu since last summer, when she won the United States Tennis Assn. Junior National championship in 18-and-under singles and the U.S. Open Junior championship after a first-round loss as a wild-card player in the U.S. Open grand slam event.

After those triumphs, Tu launched her pro career within two months. But when McClain finally saw Tu again in Carlsbad, he was surprised to discover her game had deteriorated.

“I felt she was playing 60-70% of when she won national juniors last year,” McClain said. “I didn’t see her game going anywhere. It’s going to take a good six months to really get her game to where it should be.

“But, in terms of quickness, speed and youth, I think that girl can be awfully good. I think she could be No. 1 in the world someday.”

And in terms of attitude and sheer grit, she has not been an easy opponent on the Women’s Tennis Assn. tour.

Despite her youth and her glitches, Tu’s career record is 19-18.

Tu knows she’s struggling. Her serve is inconsistent and her footwork must improve. And for the past few months, her attempt to learn how to volley and use a backhand slice shot has been awkward and slow.

“I’m having a very difficult time learning the one-hand slice on the run,” she said. “I move really well, but I don’t move efficiently. I need a lot of variety. I’m working on everything, trying to make everything better.”

And so she recently returned to her roots, Warner Center, where she plays against tennis director Randy Berg in morning matches while McClain looks on and critiques.

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Tu needs an overhaul, he says. But in her final workout Wednesday before she departed for Toronto for the Canadian Open, which starts Monday, Tu looked overmatched.

Berg, who last year was the No. 2-ranked player in Southern California in the 35-and-over division, is 6 feet 1, 195 pounds, with a far stronger serve than can be found on the WTA circuit. Tu is not even 5-5 and 104 pounds.

Berg, not surprisingly, beat Tu, 6-3, 6-3.

Tu, a baseline player, said Berg is the perfect sparring partner. She likes the power and pace of his deep groundstrokes. But often--too often, perhaps--Berg beats Tu with a drop shot or a slice, the very shots she should be using.

Tu realizes she must look for opportunities to volley.

“I should be coming in more, but Randy and I have this thing where we want to beat each other,” said Tu, her competitiveness overtaking her lesson plan. “Randy’s tough and he helps me a lot.”

Berg said Tu just needs experience.

“[Her opponents] may not be as fast, but they know every kind of strategy,” Berg said. “Meilen just needs to get better and learn from experience. I think she also needs to be more confident.

“When she gets on the court with me, she says, ‘You’re going down.’ She never wavers. But when she plays tournaments, I think she knows she can compete and that she can win. But she needs to believe that she can bury those opponents.”

Coming off her USTA Junior championship 364 days ago, Tu was never more confident. It carried over into November, when she upset Amanda Coetzer, 6-1, 6-3, and Katerina Maleeva, 6-4, 6-3, in the first two rounds of the Philadelphia Women’s Championships.

Maleeva has been ranked as high as sixth, and Coetzer as high as 12th. The victories came in Tu’s second event as a pro.

“When I found out I was playing Amanda Coetzer I booked my flight home for the next day,” Tu said. “[But] I served great and I blew her off the court. Against Katerina, I served even better. She had just come off a tournament win.”

In her only quarterfinal appearance, Tu was then beaten by Mary Pierce, 6-2, 6-4.

“I was a little intimidated, just by the way [Pierce] carried herself,” Tu said. “I couldn’t believe I was out there playing.”

Those victories, Tu said, got the attention of other players.

“Once you beat somebody, people start asking around, ‘How do you play Meilen?’ ” she said. “And, meanwhile, I was working on my game. I was going through a transition. I’m still going through a transition.”

Following a two-month winter layoff, she had a difficult clay court season, in which she was unable to win any first-round matches in a main draw. It was a low point, punctuated by a 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (7-3) loss to Maleeva in the first round of the Chris Evert Cup at Indian Wells in February.

“[Tu] has very good shots, but there is a lot to work on,” Maleeva told The Times.

Tu has shown signs of rebounding in her past four events, none of which were on clay. She is 5-3 in that span, with two of the losses in three sets.

She improved her ranking by 20 points--her second-biggest jump next to the 105 she made at Philadelphia--at the DFS Classic in Birmingham, England, in June. Tu opened the grass-court event with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over Jolene Watanabe of Arcadia and followed by defeating Meredith McGrath, who was ranked 24th 13 1/2 months ago.

“I think I can play with these girls,” Tu said. “It’s just a matter of a point here and there. So many times this year I lost because I couldn’t convert a deuce or my [advantage].

“But I’ve learned that if I want to go up, I have to take some losses. If I want to play for 10 years, I have to learn things now. If I want to stay at 130 or 150, I don’t have to work on my game.”

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Tu wants to move up, and so she is again working with McClain, the coach who taught her to be a juniors champion. McClain, who will travel with Tu to the U.S. Open in two weeks, won’t pull any punches when it comes to telling Tu what she needs.

“She needs to develop good stroke mechanics,” he said. “Her shot selection is poor. I don’t know who all’s been involved [with her], but they didn’t work at developing her game. But you can’t criticize her for it. They probably just concentrated on getting some wins.”

Yet, here is Tu, moving ever so swiftly from No. 636 to 19 points away from the top 100.

“It wasn’t just a lucky thing, a freak thing,” Tu said of her victories over Coetzer, Maleeva and others. “If I wasn’t good, I wouldn’t have won those matches.

“I’m proud of myself. I’ve come a long way.”