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Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.3 KB | 113 lines

                                                                                SPORT, Page 86

Unexpected and Unspoiled


Not for him the fireworks and foul language; courtly Jim Courier
is taking U.S. tennis to the top

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III


    When Jim Courier won last year's French Open, one of
tennis' four Grand Slams, it was pretty big news in Paris and
in his hometown of Dade City, Fla. When Courier won last month's
Australian Open, another of the coveted four, it was big news
Down Under -- and in Dade City, Fla. Last week Courier was
closing in on becoming the first American man to rank No. 1
since the 1985 dethroning of John McEnroe, who is still big news
pretty much everywhere. Presumably, as Courier fought his way
through a San Francisco tournament where he could pick up the
needed handful of ranking points -- he started the week with
3,652 to leader Stefan Edberg's 3,671 -- word of his status was
eagerly awaited in Dade City, Fla.

    Although the top ranking means millions of dollars a year,
plus celebrity status in places on this planet where a football
or baseball is just a demonstration of geometric forms, the
rest of the U.S. seemed largely unaware of Courier's climb, the
fastest in the sport's modern history.

    Americans are apt to get to like Courier. He plays with a
baseball cap tugged over his barbered (not styled) reddish-blond
locks. It is almost impossible to see his bony, big-eyed,
broad-mouthed face without envisioning him atop a tractor. He
is athletic but not graceful, a meat-and-potatoes player who got
ahead by hard work. Says ex-champion turned TV commentator Fred
Stolle: "Grit and determination, they're his trademarks." Adds
Stolle's broadcast partner Cliff Drysdale: "Courier is a
bulldog."

    Yet he is also, by tennis standards, a yes-sir, no-ma'am
gentleman. His youthful outbursts, occasionally obscene, usually
amounted to a hard look at an unwelcome call or a pumped fist,
Jimmy Connors style, when things went his way. Now, at 21, he
has learned from coach Jose Higueras that champions don't waste
even that much energy overreacting. When a string popped on
Courier's racquet at a hideously inopportune moment in the
Australian final -- on a break point against Edberg that could
have settled the second set -- Courier gave a barely perceptible
shrug and strolled over for a replacement. Crowds there admired
his tenacity and saw him as a fighter, a McEnroe without the
abuse.

    He has been equally subdued about the quest for the top.
He answered one recent query, "If I don't get there, No. 2 in
the world is pretty good." To another he said, "It's nothing
that anyone can do anything about. You just play your best each
week and see what that wacky computer spits out." He is keenly
aware that getting there does not ensure staying there. The
complex formula makes it possible to win a tournament yet lose
ground to a just defeated opponent. But Courier seems to have
the sturdy frame, stubborn persistence and stoic temperament to
hover somewhere near the top for years.

    Already, during the past year no other tour player has
come close to his consistency in high-pressure circumstances.
Of the half a dozen biggest events on the men's tour -- the
four Grand Slams, the tour finale and the Lipton International
in Key Biscayne, Fla. -- Courier won three and made the finals
of two others. Says novelist Eliot Berry, whose book about the
past two years on the tennis circuit, Tough Draw, will be
published in August: "Tennis is in significant part a game of
intimidation. Although Courier is well behaved, his physical and
mental toughness make him very intimidating. He is probably the
strongest man on the tour, the one you would least want to take
on in a fight."

    Courier's muted style is most striking in contrast to the
sport's Las Vegas running rebel, Andre Agassi, a model of
meticulously manicured grubbiness whose endorsement career is
tied to the unconsciously self-damning phrase "Image is
everything." Courier's image is Everyman. Agassi has devoted
himself to becoming a teen idol, in the process stirring more
talk about his hairdos and haberdashery than about his serves
and volleys. When reporters mention Agassi's millions from
endorsement deals, Courier replies that he can make plenty
wielding a racquet. Not that he is ruling out any options -- he
has just auditioned for a deodorant commercial.

    Half a dozen years back, Courier and Agassi were roommates
at Nick Bollettieri's tennis camp in Bradenton, Fla. Courier
left, griping that the flashy Agassi was getting more attention
from owner Bollettieri. Courier, the slow but steady type, won
the Orange Bowl, a junior tournament, at 16. But he didn't win
a pro-tour event until 1989 and didn't add another victory
until just 11 months ago, at Indian Wells, Calif. Meanwhile, his
age mates Michael Chang and Pete Sampras had joined Agassi in
surging ahead. A year and a half ago, when asked to rank
up-and-comers, former champion Arthur Ashe mentioned Courier in
the second tier.

    Courier surprised almost everyone. At Indian Wells last
year, after early-round victories, he said he was winning
because he had new self-knowledge and discipline. At the time
most reporters thought he was just having a lucky week. He has
turned it into the luck of a lifetime.