Unexpected And Unspoiled

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 agemates 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.