NET DREAMS : AFTER CONQUERING COLLEGE TENNIS, UCLA'S GIMELSTOB IS READY TO TAKE HIS PLACE ON THE PROFESSIONAL TOUR.

Byline: Kevin Modesti Daily News Staff Writer

Everytime he tells the story, Justin Gimelstob has to convince people it wasn't made up, a publicity stunt by the nation's top-ranked college tennis player and the next young star of the professional tour.

It goes like this: During a typically fitful sleep before a first-round match at a pro tournament two months ago in Scottsdale, Ariz., Gimelstob dreamed he was going to defeat Karol Kucera of Bratislava.

``Right before I woke up, I remember winning the last point, and I looked over at the scoreboard, and it said 6-4, 6-2,'' says the UCLA sophomore, who had received a wild-card invitation to the tournament.

Seeing that Kucera was No. 60 in the world at the time, and Gimelstob was No. 436, he must have been dreaming. But you know how stories like this turn out: Gimelstob won the match - 6-4, 6-2.

By the time he beat No. 31 Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden in the second round, the Phoenix press had seized on the convenient angle, the kid living a dream.

Well, we'll bite, too, and say that Justin Gimelstob, 19, is playing so well as he leads the top-ranked Bruins into the NCAA tournament starting Saturday in Athens, Ga., he's unconscious.

It's been a season beyond his wildest, uh, imagination.

Last fall, coming off a national 18-and-under championship and first-round victories at the U.S. Open and the San Jose tour stop, Gimelstob wasn't certain to play college tennis this season.

``When you're a kid, like I am - still - you get around tournaments like the U.S. Open, see you can compete with the pros, see all the money, the fame and the fans, and you get caught up in it,'' he says between mouthfuls of turkey sandwich one afternoon in UCLA coach Billy Martin's office. ``What you have to do is take away the emotional aspect.''

Martin, Gimelstob's father, Barry, and other advisers replaced his soaring emotions with hard truth, and talked him into coming back for a second college season.

``What I learned was that there was a lot more to turning professional than being capable of playing professional tennis,'' says Gimelstob, a Morristown, N.J.,native who won his first national title in the 12-and-under division. ``I wasn't ready to make tennis a living at that point.''

A good student who entered UCLA a year early, he recognized the need to mature physically and, particularly, emotionally.

There were also kinks in his serve to be smoothed out. And his ongoing efforts to adjust his game to his body, which had grown from 6 feet to 6-5 in a couple of years. And his commitment, made a year earlier, to bringing UCLA a title.

Justin wasn't sure at the time, but says now that the decision to delay going pro until June was ``very intelligent.''

The one-time tennis brat has mellowed.

``Last year he really would lose it at times,'' Martin says.

``I would say I was overly exuberant,'' says Gimelstob, a nearly 4.0 student who plans to take correspondence courses through UC Berkeley while playing on the tour. ``I had to take a couple of steps back and say that A, what I was doing was detrimental to my game, and B, personally this wasn't the way I wanted to conduct myself. I didn't like the kind of image I was projecting.''

Steadier on the court, he won 21 of 23 singles matches, losing only to TCU's Paul Robinson and Pepperdine's Simon Aspelin, and 20 of 23 doubles matches with UCLA teammate Srdjan Muskatirovic, ending the regular season ranked No. 1 in both disciplines.

Along the way, he kept his composure while his family dealt with the arrest of his brother Josh, a Tulane University tennis player, following a Jan. 20 automobile accident that killed a police officer on the New Orleans campus.

Josh is alleged to have been speeding when he struck the officer, who tried to wave him to a stop on a campus road. A Tulane spokesman said Josh Gimelstob has yet to be arraigned.

``We're working toward a resolution,'' says Barry Gimelstob, an insurance consultant and three-time New Jersey high school coach of the year, who declines to discuss the matter in depth. ``(Justin) is very close to his brother. I think he's handled it wonderfully.''

Of course, steady nerves wouldn't have meant as much on the court if Justin's serve hadn't improved to a quality befitting a man of his height and weight (190 pounds). He arrived in Westwood with a fundamentally flawed service motion; his right elbow was too low, tucked in too close to his torso.

``That was going to keep him from reaching any kind of top pro potential,'' Martin says. ``It was crucial he do something about it now, and not wait a couple of years.

``His second serve is still where he needs to improve, to get a little more confidence and do more under pressure than just kind of spin it in. At the top pro level, which is where he wants to be, they're still going to hurt him a little bit on his second serve.''

But Martin says Gimelstob figures to strengthen that weak link.

``As a player, he's as competitive and motivated and has as much desire to succeed as any player I've been around,'' says the coach, who was the last UCLA player to win the NCAA singles title, in 1975.

With a pro career just ahead - his next stop is a pre-Wimbledon tournament in England - you might think Gimelstob would be less than excited about UCLA's chance to win the school's first national title since 1984 and 16th overall.

``That's where you're wrong,'' Gimelstob says. ``The development of this season has meant more to me than anything else in my tennis career. Hopefully I'll be able to say this was the dream season.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--color) UCLA's Justin Gimelstob is the top-rat ed collegiate player in the nation. He will turn professional this summer.

(2) Justin Gimelstob leads the top-ranked Bruins into the NCAA tournament this weekend in Athens, Ga. He won 21 of 23 singles matches this year.

Terri Thuente / Daily News