Will This House of Chang Rule the Tennis World?

The latest star of the future in U.S. men’s tennis had just finished his first tournament as a professional player. He felt as if he were finished.

His arms and calves had started cramping near the end of a three-set, second-round loss in the U.S. Indoor tournament at Memphis, Tenn., in February.

After the match, things got worse. He got cramps in his chest, and soon his entire body became involved in the struggle.

Finally, while lying in ice, between spasms, America’s newest tennis prodigy had a question for the tour’s trainer.

“Am I dying?” asked Michael Chang.

He wasn’t, of course, and now, at all of 16 1/2, he can look back and laugh.

“It was hurting bad,” Chang said the other day at Sunny Hills Racquet Club in Fullerton, near his Placentia home. “That was the worst feeling. It was so scary.”

Betty Chang, Michael’s mother and a frightened witness, nodded.

“Hyperventilating, exhaustion and dehydration,” she said.

But things got better.

After all, Chang had already made history as an amateur.

At 15, he was the youngest player ever to win the United States Tennis Assn. national 18-and-under singles title.

That victory led to a spot in the U.S. Open in September, which in turn produced another record as he became the youngest male player to win a main-draw match. He defeated a player 17 years older than himself, Paul McNamee, in four sets, and afterward, looked like the Pied Piper, the national media trailing him in hot pursuit.

Then Chang reached the semifinals in a tournament at Scottsdale, Ariz., and before losing made a nervous wreck of 26-year-old Brad Gilbert. There, Chang became the youngest player to reach the semifinals of a Grand Prix event and probably became the first player to borrow a pair of tennis shoes from a spectator in mid-match, when his own shoes lost their soles.

Depending on how you look at it, Chang bears the good fortune--or burden--of having to carry this youngest ever tag around. You don’t have to look hard, however, to find many young talents who have failed in this game.

Still, no less an authority than Pancho Segura has compared Chang to the young Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall.

Charlie Pasarell, a former pro and U.S. Davis Cup team member, watched Chang patrol the baseline and pound ground strokes and said: “I wish I moved as fast as he does. If I did, I probably would have won 10 Wimbledons.”

Others, searching for replacements for the old Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe, have already lighted the torch and waved it--perhaps shoved it--at Chang and Andre Agassi, U.S. teen tennis hopes for the 1990s.

For Chang, all this has happened in less than six months on the tour as a professional. Then again, in those few months, Michael Chang has:

--Raised his computer ranking from No. 163 in the world at the end of 1987 to No. 74, which means Chang is spared having to qualify for big tournaments or playing in satellite events, tennis’ version of the Continental Basketball Assn. That ranking puts him well ahead of fellow Americans Tim Wilkison and Jimmy Arias.

--Become the youngest male to win a main-draw match at Wimbledon in more than 60 years. Chang defeated Glenn Layendecker, 7-5, 1-6, 6-4, 6-2, last month, then lost to seventh-seeded Henri Leconte, 2-6, 7-6, 6-2, 6-3, in a second-round match on Centre Court.

Joe Chang, Michael’s father, says that the Leconte-Chang match was one of the hot subjects on Fleet Street during Wimbledon’s first week, right behind Barbara Potter changing shirts at courtside.

--Reached the third round at the French Open before losing to McEnroe, 6-0, 6-3, 6-1. Officials aren’t sure whether Chang made history there, citing the lack of records, but they believe he is the youngest male player since the Open era began in 1968 to reach the third round at the French Open.

A year ago, Chang won the singles championship in the 18-and-under division at the USTA’s national hard court event at Burlingame, Calif. It was his first stop on the road to Flushing Meadow and instant fame before turning professional early this year. Who would have guessed then that just a year later, he’d be earning his living in the same tournaments as Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker and McEnroe?

Not Michael Chang.

“I would have laughed,” said Chang, who could have competed in the 18s through 1990 if he hadn’t turned pro.

“Everything has happened so fast,” he said. “I was looking at some pictures when I was 12 and still playing the 12 hard courts. I’m such a little kid then, and four years later, I’m playing in the professionals. It’s weird.

“I think I’m going at a good pace. I didn’t jump up too fast.”

The story has been told several times of a longtime British journalist peering at a crowded press section--right behind such people as U.S. Davis Cup captain Tom Gorman, Arthur Ashe and Brian Gottfried--awaiting Chang’s second-round match on an obscure outside court at the U.S. Open.

“Now you’re as desperate as we’ve been,” he said.

The former American champions and the media gathered to check out Chang and his game. Chang showed he could counterpunch with the best of them, hitting a two-handed backhand with sound preparation and taking the ball on the rise off both sides. One obvious weakness was--and still is--his serve. It probably will never be a strong part of his game. In fact, Chang is working on it so it won’t be a liability.

Joe Chang says his son’s volley is better from the recent grass-court experience. Again, you won’t be watching Michael Chang serve and volley on every point. The Changs merely want him to approach the net more to create an element of surprise.

So, is his game--based on his excellent speed and good ground strokes--the kind that will make him the champion that Americans have been searching for?

Or will he go the way of previous phenoms, Arias and Aaron Krickstein? There are the platitudes from such as Segura and Pasarell. From others, there is uncertainty stirred by watching Arias and Krickstein rise and fall, in part because of injuries and one-dimensional games.

“It’s still very early to say (much) about Michael,” said Gorman, who watched Chang play Leconte at Wimbledon and was impressed with the way he handled the pressure.

“You have to think of his age. There’s going to be difficult times and difficult matches for him. At his age, he’s looking at all aspects of improving his game. I don’t know if he’ll ever develop an overpowering serve. But look at Jimmy (Connors), how many times were there when he didn’t have an ace in a four- or five-set match?”

Leconte, for one, was caught completely by surprise in the first two sets against Chang, who, without a big serve, wouldn’t have seemed to be a threat on grass.

“He was moving so quickly with such good timing,” Leconte said. “And I’m thinking, ’16 years old?’ God!”

There’s another element to consider in Chang’s rapid ascent. What the Americans are waiting for--a replacement for aging champions--is something the Asians haven’t experienced yet. A tennis champion. No matter what he does, Chang already is the most notable Chinese-American tennis player ever.

He realized this interesting set of dual expectations even before turning pro.

“Now, I see a lot of Orientals at my matches because I’m Chinese,” Chang said last fall.

After Wimbledon, a tournament promoter wanted Chang to play a big-money exhibition event in Japan, knowing this kid would be a big hit. The Changs said thanks but no thanks to the quick buck.

“They are clamoring to see Michael over there,” Joe Chang said. “But it wasn’t the right time. Michael was exhausted after Wimbledon. We’ll have plenty of time to do those things.”

With his finger, Michael Chang traced a graph on the table as he talked to a reporter. “It’s too hard if you go from this point down here and you go straight up,” he said. “There’s so many little things you’ve got to earn in here. Already, there’s so many things I’ve learned on the pro tour.”

For one, his mishap at Memphis made Chang realize the importance of diet and conditioning. When the cramps started again in his next event at Indian Wells during a first-round loss, Chang told his father he wasn’t ready to play a best-of-five-set match at the International Players Championships. He skipped the tournament.

That decision, no doubt, was discussed in depth during a family meeting. All questions, major or minor, are dealt with by the Chang troika--father Joe, mother Betty, and Michael. Whether to turn pro. What tournaments to play. What interviews to grant.

The Changs’ family ties are more tightly strung than your average racket. Although Michael is an intelligent and articulate teen-ager, he is usually very quiet and often hesitant to approach others. Because of that and Michael’s age, Betty Chang travels the professional tour with her son, and both say her presence has helped ease the transition and enhance relationships with the other players.

Said Joe Chang: “I think without my wife, Michael would have a lot of trouble on the tour. My wife is a unique lady. She’ll go out of her way to make friends for Michael. Michael, himself, I don’t think he can do it. He won’t really go out to make the initial contact with people, but Betty will do that.”

There’s a flip side to this special kind of family unity, though. Through the years, after the Changs moved from St. Paul, Minn., to the San Diego area in 1979, before arriving in Orange County last summer, numerous coaches have been shuttled in and out under the heavy scrutiny of the Changs. No one really seemed to be just right for Michael except his father. Segura was willing to take a crack after Chang’s success at the U.S. Open but wanted total control. Neither Michael nor Joe wanted to submit to those conditions.

Segura, in a national tennis magazine, has called it the family’s “bondage.”

Said Betty Chang: “To be a coach, in our mind, right now is to be able to develop Michael in every aspect. At the same time, go inside with the family. Just don’t take Michael away from the family. You’d never be able to do it because we’re such a tight-knit family.”

Curiously, the USTA, looking to resuscitate the country’s youth movement, hired a former top player, Gottfried, to work with “rookie” pros and asked the Changs to participate in the program. Previously, the relationship between the Changs and the USTA was strained because of disagreements over the direction of the junior program. But the family saw the opportunity and went for it.

Sort of.

Whether Gottfried becomes Michael Chang’s coach, or the kind of coach the Changs want, remains to be seen. For now, Michael plans to work with him at selected tournaments and in the weeks leading up to the U.S. Open.

The family, typically, is taking a wait-and-see attitude.

“It’s hard to say (if it will work) because it’s only been a week together at Wimbledon,” Michael Chang said earlier this month. “As you get to know a person, things can change. Maybe it’s whether you find out something annoying or something great.”

Michael Chang wasn’t completely thrilled to read in all the newspapers that Gottfried is his coach after Wimbledon.

“I feel kind of bad if somebody is actually going to say they’re my coach, because I think that nobody should have the right to take away the definition of a coach from me and my dad,” he said. “Because my dad has been the one that raised me and spent the full time to develop me. It’s just that I don’t want anything to be taken away from him.”

Joe Chang is protective of his son--and vice versa. Michael was once quoted in World Tennis magazine as saying, “If I said forget it (about tennis), my dad would be incredibly mad. Just looking at the way my parents and my brother (Carl, a member of Cal’s tennis team) have helped me, you want to give something back by working hard, showing that you care and that your parents didn’t waste $100,000 for you to screw around. This is a family thing.”

But when does a tight family become too much of a good thing? More than a few outsiders have viewed the motives and maneuvers of the Chang clan with a skeptical eye.

“There’s just so much at stake for them,” said one Southland tennis coach. “It really strikes me as though they treat him like a product. Like a commodity.”

That’s something Joe Chang wouldn’t dispute. He sees definite similarities in the vocations of Joe Chang, senior research chemist for the development of new products for an oil company, and Joe Chang, tennis father.

“In my job here, I enjoy it,” he said. “I’m developing all kinds of new products. The way we are handling him is like handling a new product.”

Joe Chang laughed and paused.

“It is. Because you’ve got to identify Michael’s needs and establish a strategic plan to fulfill Michael’s needs.

“In a way, that’s exactly what we are doing with new products here. You identify the customer’s needs and then you set up a plan to fulfill the customer’s needs.

“Most of the tennis coaches, they don’t do planning. It’s important for somebody behind this project to do the planning part. Because you know exactly where you want to go three months from here, six months from here and what you want to accomplish.”

Certainly, the Changs couldn’t have planned it any better since the day they sat down four years ago and laid the groundwork for their 12-year-old’s career. The concept behind Project Chang is a simple matter of supply and demand.

The customer?

The American public.

And the customer’s needs?

An American tennis champion.

It is, as they would say in Joe Chang’s other line of work, an open market.