Braverman Takes Final Shot

Brandis Braverman never doubted she would make an impact on the women’s professional tennis tour. What she lacked in power and size, she would make up in speed, tenacity and court sense.

If she could become the nation’s top girls’ 18-and-under player at age 16, then why wouldn’t she reach the pro tour’s top 20 before turning 20?

But Braverman, who is 21 and ranked 532 on the Women’s Tennis Assn. computer, now realizes she was kidding herself. In four years of playing in satellite tournaments, she has never been ranked higher than 292, and her career prize money of $25,070 is not even 5% of what Jennifer Capriati earned last weekend for winning the French Open.

“Looking back, at 17, I had ridiculously high goals,” said Braverman, a Newport Beach resident. “I didn’t think it would be so tough. I thought I’d be seeded at the Grand Slams by now. But the physical grind of it has been more than I expected.”

And more than her 5-foot-7, 125-pound frame has been able to handle. Although she was injury-prone in the juniors, she usually bounced back quickly. As a touring professional, her injuries have come one after another, each more severe than the last, and have caused her to take a hard look at her tennis career.

In the last 18 months, she has played only three months on the tour. Since December of 1999, she has had surgery to repair scar tissue in her right knee, tendinitis in her right rotator cuff, torn ligaments in her left ankle. Most recently she suffered a ruptured disk in her lower back, which has kept her out since March.

“I don’t want to be too dramatic, but yeah, I wonder if maybe I am cursed or something,” she said. “I don’t know whether it’s bad luck or that my body’s not cut out for the day-in and day-out abuse of playing four, five hours a day. That’s something I’m considering as a reality at this point.”

Georgia Braverman, her mother, also wonders whether it’s time for her daughter to call it quits.

“The other injuries were fairly minor, but the back is very serious,” Georgia said. “I want Brandis to get married and have a family, have babies and have a great life. I don’t want her to be arthritic when she’s in her 30s.”

Brandis doesn’t enjoy thinking about that prospect either. So when back surgery was mentioned as an option, she began considering retirement. But after two doctors told her surgery could be avoided with aggressive therapy and steroid injections to the affected region, she decided to give her career one last try.

This time, her expectations are a little lower.

“I still believe I can be a top 50 singles player and maybe a top 20 or 30 doubles player,” she said. “I’m not going to turn my back on something I’ve given a lot of time to. I’m good at it and I’ve got some God-given talent to do it. I’ve just got some injury problems to deal with.”

Before she decided to continue her career, Braverman asked her coach, Ross Case, for an honest evaluation. Case gave her his blessing and agreed to help get her game and mind back in form.

“She still wants to play and she still has time,” said Case, a former Australian Davis Cup player who teaches at Big Canyon Country Club. “But because of her injuries, that time is going fast. I think she still has a chance to make some inroads and that means getting into the top 100.”

With her court time being so limited lately, Braverman has had a lot of time to reflect.

“I’ve spent a few nights staring at the ceiling,” she said. “I ask myself things like, ‘Did you do the right thing turning pro so early?’ ”

Every time, she answers the same way.

“I’m only 21, way too young to be regretting my life,” she said.

Of course, if a tennis ball were a crystal ball, she probably would have listened to her mother and the dozens of college coaches who advised her to test her attacking baseline game against the best collegiate players. Then, after a year or two, maybe her body would be ready for the rigors of the pro tour.

Stella Sampras, UCLA’s women’s coach and Pete Sampras’ sister, recruited Braverman twice--once after Braverman graduated from Bridges Academy in Sherman Oaks and again after she played the satellite circuit for a year.

“A lot of these kids feel like if they don’t go pro at 17, their dream is gone and they’re a failure if they go to college,” said Sampras, who played the tour for a year after graduating from UCLA. “That’s a shame. They can get a year of growing up, develop their game and have some balance in their life. If they do well in college tennis, they’ve proved themselves and they can go on the pro circuit with confidence.”

Georgia Braverman said she was more interested in what college could offer her daughter academically.

“I’m a big advocate of education and I tried to push Brandy into it,” she said. “But I learned a long time ago that if you force somebody into something, it doesn’t work out. I didn’t want to prevent her from living her dream. You only live once.

Braverman doubts college would have held her interest for more than a year.

“I’ve always wanted to play pro,” she said. “I could have gone to USC, Stanford or UCLA, but that was never my goal.”

Said Sampras: “It’s nice to have something to fall back on, but she wanted to put it all into her tennis. You’ve got to respect that. But she hasn’t done what she expected and now she doesn’t have something to fall back on.”

At this stage of her career, Braverman assumed she’d be self-sufficient, not living at home and asking her mother and the U.S. Tennis Assn. player development program to sponsor her career. But her only real highlights were a two-week stretch in July of 1999, when she defeated former NCAA singles champion Vanessa Webb of Duke and 114th-ranked Nana Miyagi of Japan at a Challenger event in Mahwah, N.J. and a week in March of this year when she defeated former NCAA singles champion Zuzana Lesenarova of San Diego and Rika Hiraki of Japan in qualifying for the $25,000 La Canada Challenger.

“It’s a lot more comfortable living to be in the top 50,” she said. “You don’t want to be where I am. It’s a grind.”

The grind got to Braverman once she qualified for the main draw at La Canada. She could barely get the ball over the net because of the sharp pain in her lower back and she lost her first-round match. For the next two weeks, she could not get out of bed.

“That was the first time my injury problems went beyond tennis,” she said. “There was kind of a fear that set in.”

And a lot of frustration too.

“Every time I get rolling, it seems I get hurt again,” she said. “I’m not going to be a one-two punch player. My game is hitting a million balls and doing a lot of running, but that’s a little tough on my body.”

And even tougher for a mother to watch.

“It’s been very, very painful to see my daughter go through this,” Georgia Braverman said. “It’s hard to see players she used to beat regularly in the juniors pass her by [in the rankings] just because they’ve stayed in the loop. Each time Brandis gets hurt, she has to start all over again.”

Braverman’s sisters, Natalie, age 17, and Jill, 11, are talented junior players, but Georgia Braverman is steering them away from a career in professional tennis.

“Fortunately, Natalie wants to play college tennis,” Georgia said. “We’re slowly introducing other sports to Jill.”

This past week, Brandis Braverman was given permission by her doctor to starting hitting balls again. If her back is willing, she hopes to start yet another comeback at the $50,000 Los Gatos Challenger next month.

After every long layoff, Braverman said she has a harder time remembering how to win.

“When you lose so many years of matches, you start to lose your court sense and your confidence a little bit,” she said. “To close out a match is an art form. You develop it over the years. When you don’t play, that art form goes away.”

She knows she can’t afford any more major setbacks. But the plan is to play for one more solid year and see where she can go.

“My ideal situation would be to play for another six or seven years,” she said. “Then maybe commentate [on television] or work for IMG or the USTA.”