Hard To Rock On

By BILL DWYRE

March 13, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES SPORTS EDITOR

Tennis star Patrick Rafter has a problem. All his working parts don’t work.

He is 27, has more rock-star appeal than most rock stars and has played the game on a level that brought him to the No. 1 ranking for a short stint last July and also to U.S. Open titles in 1997 and ’98.

He has tasted success’ ultimates, has dreamed them and lived them, and now he is facing the reality that he may not be able to get them back.

The next stop in his search will be Indian Wells, where things really get serious. It is a tournament that awards $2.45 million in prize money. The champion gets $400,000.

More important, it is perhaps the sixth most prestigious tennis tournament in the world, after the four Grand Slam events and the Ericsson Open in Miami. A case could be made that it is tied for fifth with the Ericsson, now that Charlie Pasarell has made his $75-million dream into spectacular brick and mortar called Indian Wells Garden.

Indian Wells isn’t Tuesday night in Scottsdale, Ariz., where losses can be explained away as “getting in some matches.” The lights are brighter; the headlines, like the money, much bigger.

Were these the best of times, as 1997 through the summer of ’99 were for Rafter, Indian Wells would be his ideal stage. He would be a superstar among superstars. His chances of winning would be as much a roll of the dice, the luck of a well-timed ace or passing shot, as anything. He could swagger alongside the game’s top guns and know that, while Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi and Yevgeny Kafelnikov have what it takes and expect to be around when they are taking the trophy pictures, so does he.

Rafter’s swagger started to disappear nearly a year ago, in the third round of the French Open. He had played with a sore right shoulder for some time, but this time, the pain screamed that it might be serious.

He told his coach, Tony Roche.

“I said to Rochey,” Rafter recalled, “that I might be in a bit of trouble with my shoulder tonight. He said to get it warmed up and see how it felt after 20 minutes.”

It felt good enough to play but not good enough to win. He lost in four sets to Fernando Meligeni of Brazil.

At this stage, the macho thing to do, and there is plenty of macho in the male Australian species, was to play through the injury. It would heal. If it didn’t, take a few days off and then crank it up again.

Thus went the summer of ‘99, right up until Aug. 30, opening day of the U.S. Open. Sampras, apparently fit and appearing primed to make a run at a record 13th Grand Slam event title, had shocked the tennis world in the afternoon by announcing he had injured his back in practice and was out for perhaps two months.

Rafter, the defending champion, was in the featured night match, against French veteran Cedric Pioline.

“It was in the first set, serving up a break at 4-3,” Rafter said. “I knew something bad had happened. I thought I was ready. I had told the media I was fine. I even took the week before off, just to make sure.”

But this time, the tendons in his serving shoulder had partially torn, and even though he kept playing and actually got within two points of the match in the fourth set, reality was setting in.

“I kind of floated through it out there,” he said. “I hit a lot of flat serves because the kick serve hurt so bad, and a lot of people watching said later that they thought I was playing great.”

But early in the fifth set, he walked to the net, told Pioline he was sorry but he couldn’t go on, and left U.S. Open officials reeling with the loss of two of their main attractions in less than eight hours.

Ironically, the consensus at that point was that Sampras’ injury was much more serious, much more of a threat to his career, and that Rafter would be back quickly and be a force in the winter tournaments in Europe. Instead, Sampras returned in time to win the season-ending ATP Tour World Championship and Rafter had rotator cuff surgery Oct. 24 in Melbourne, Australia.

Now, he is mostly scared, and frustrated.

“I even am careful about sleeping on my right side,” he said. “I think about things like that.”

He knows to be the Rafter of old, he has to train hard, but he can’t without the fear of re-injury.

“I need to work, and work long and hard, to get my game to where it was. I’m not a natural. I’m not Pete Sampras.”

Rafter lost in the first round at the Scottsdale tournament to a young Spaniard named Juan Carlos Ferrero, and he knows that there will be more of those losses ahead. But he has a plan.

“In a few months,” he said, “it will get to the stage where I’ll have to go hard and see what’s there. I will go out and play as best I can and hope for some good results and hope that the healing happens.”

But if it doesn’t?

“You also can get to a stage,” he said, “where your whole career has to be readdressed.”

Helping Rafter with positive thoughts through this fairly negative period are goals and family. His goals are participation in the final round of a successful Davis Cup defense and participation in the Summer Olympics, which begin in Sydney a week after the U.S. Open ends. His family is mom and dad and eight siblings. Rafter is the third youngest of the nine.

“My family has always been with me, keeping me straight,” he said.

He talked about how growing up in the Northern Queensland town of Mount Isa, population 18,000 and also home of Greg Norman, was the best lesson in perspective ever. His brother Peter, who travels with him, agreed.

“We didn’t have lots of money, but we never lacked for anything, either,” he said. “The tennis camp trips my father used to take us on [are] still a good memory. We shared everything, including each other’s clothes.”

It was at one of those outings that Peter, three years older than Patrick, saw the future of tennis in his family and, at first, didn’t like it much.

“I remember the day I quit the game,” Peter Rafter said. “It was the first time Pat beat me. He was 12, I was 15, and he beat me. I was so mad I smashed two rackets.”

Patrick Rafter’s reaction to that story? He laughed heartily.

“He said I was 12 the first time I beat him? I was a lot bloody younger than that.”

So even if the classic Patrick Rafter kick serve is gone for a while, till it stops hurting so much to hit it, and even if the heights he once reached may never be reached again, Rafter has a lot to fall back on, including a personality and perspective that is among the best in the game.

Thursday at Scottsdale, when Sampras pulled out of the featured match against Alex Corretja because of a sore back muscle, leaving tournament officials with nothing to offer ticket-buyers except the announcement of a default, Rafter was asked if he would go out and play an exhibition pro set against an agreeable Corretja. Virtually any other player in Rafter’s condition would have declined.

Rafter said yes.

TENNIS

INDIAN WELLS MASTERS SERIES

Men’s main draw begins today; women continue with fourth round.

* Prize money: $2.45 million (men), $2 million (women).

* Defending champions: Mark Philippoussis, Serena Williams.

* Finals: March 19 (men), March 18 (women).

From the Heights

Patrick Rafter’s year-by-year statistics:

1990-93

Tournaments won: 0

Highest ranking: 57