Chang Can’t Wait to Ease Growing Pains

There are still some jarring reminders for Michael Chang that, as a 17-year-old adrift in professional tennis, he is still a boy in a man’s world.

These lessons occur both on the court and off. The lessons of tennis are self-evident and not forgotten. Life’s lessons are to be digested over a lifetime.

For Chang, however, there are more poignant lessons. At last, after seeking medical advice to explain the teen-ager’s persistent problem with cramping and fatigue, there is an answer: Mother Nature.

“I was told it was because I’m still growing,” said Chang, who experienced cramps Sunday during his loss to Aaron Krickstein in the final of the Volvo/Los Angeles tennis tournament at UCLA. “I’m still in the growth process and it’s whatever happens with the hormones or whatever. That’s what causing the cramps.”

Chang’s hormones kicked in in a big way at this year’s French Open, where he suffered severe cramping, particularly in a grueling five-set victory over Ivan Lendl in the round of 16. Chang eventually won the tournament, where he drank water and ate bananas during changeovers and was careful not to sit down, because, “For some reason cramps get worse when you sit still,” he said.

This was a lesson hard learned. In his first year on the tour, Chang began to feel cramps in his arms during a tournament at Memphis.

“I went into the training room and I sat down and they put ice on my arms,” Chang said. “When I stood up, the cramps in my arms had gone but I had cramps everywhere else.”

Chang did his stand-up routine Sunday night, too, pacing and shaking his legs during changeovers. He said he began to feel cramping midway through the third set, when he was also tired.

Fatigue at the end of a week-long tournament may not be a shocking condition for a tennis player, but for Chang, it is all to common. Oddly, Chang was seemingly one of the few players not struck with cramps during this month’s U.S. Open. Perhaps he wasn’t in the tournament long enough, losing in the round of 16.

Chang’s father, Joe, acknowledged the family had sought medical advice on the problem, but seemed resigned to it, at least through adolescence.

“I think it’s a combination of things,” Joe Chang said, seeming a bit embarrassed by the question. “Some of it is caused by nerves. But, yes, he could be in better condition.”

Chang is mature enough to know he can’t rush nature, but, on top of the other frustrations attendant with being a teen-ager, Chang would just as soon this stuff would get over with.

“I’m hoping I’ll grow up faster,” Chang said.