WHERE WILL TENNIS' FUTURE GO IN U.S.?

Byline: Hal Bock Associated Press

In the early days of this year's U.S. Open, tennis gathered its movers and shakers for an impressive show of force and unity - something the sport has not always enjoyed.

The purpose was to announce an ambitious program designed to make tennis more mainstream, funded by an infusion of $31 million over the next five years. And just to show how serious they were, the WTA Tour and ATP Tour announced they have at last found a way not to hold their season-ending championships at the same time. That's a start.

This makeover may require more than cold, hard cash, though.

The target of the program is community involvement, a movement to broaden the base and appeal of the sport and attract 800,000 new players. It's as if the tennis world suddenly discovered playgrounds and that laying out tennis courts on them would be just as easy as hanging basketball hoops.

Once the white lines are in place, the trick is to convince kids that this is a sport that relates to them. This is the hip-hop generation and too often tennis seems stuck in a ballroom waltz. Unfortunately, the sport still has the air of elitism left over from its country-club roots.

Tennis also can be pricey. Good rackets cost $150-$200. A can of balls is $4. Don't ask the price of sneakers. Want a seat for the finals at the Open? No problem, if you've got $66-$79. And that's for the upper deck, where you get a swell view - of the New York City skyline. It's easy to walk away from that kind of expense.

The Plan for Growth's biggest annual expenditure will be a community promotion grant of $2.7 million. The teacher-coach budget is $300,000. Former Open champion Stan Smith believes the way to develop stars is to first create a pool of talented coaches. Those people may already be in place.

There are already successful grass-roots programs, too. Mike Silverman runs a public parks program in New York, providing free lessons for 10,000 kids every summer. It relies largely on private funding and would welcome the USTA dollars.

``This is a promising gesture,'' he said. ``I just hope they distribute the money in the right places, places that need the money to keep the programs going. The initiative is a good one. It's a matter of getting the money to the organizations that need it most.''

Certainly, American tennis needs a shot in the arm, the kind of fist-pumping excitement that Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe brought to the sport. And a few compelling players wouldn't hurt, either.

IBM ran a TV ad campaign during the Open with McEnroe as the centerpiece. Years after his retirement, he remains the game's most recognizable figure. That's trouble right there.

The Open had just two seeded American men. Granted the combination of Pete Sampras and Michael Chang at No. 1 and No. 2 is a pretty good show of force, but the next highest ranked Yank was Jim Courier at No. 25, a first-round washout.

On the women's side, naturalized citizen Monica Seles at No. 2, Lindsay Davenport at No. 6 and Mary Joe Fernandez at No. 12 were the lone U.S. seeds.

Sampras is a brilliant shot-maker and a genuinely nice guy who has dominated Grand Slam tennis since winning his first Open in 1990. But he gets a shrug from the fans, who are more intrigued with Andre Agassi's funky wardrobe.

Chang plays marathon matches and will run and hit forever. His Energizer bunny style, though, is more admirable than compelling.

Seles is not the player she was before she was stabbed. Davenport remains a promising prospect and Fernandez's next Slam win will be her first. None of them generates the interest that Chris Evert or Martina Navratilova did.

Venus Williams could be a savior, a tennis Tiger Woods wearing beads in her braids. She is unique, though, a product of her father's devotion, not any junior tennis training program.

Sampras was asked what he thought of the spending plan.

``Well, it will help, but I don't know if it will solve the problem,'' he said. ``I really don't know how to solve the problem because there's really not a young American coming up today that I see will have the impact that I've had or Michael or Andre or Jim or Todd (Martin). Ten years from now, it's hard to say where we're going to be. This game goes in cycles.''

And in America, right now the cycle is down.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1) Lindsay Davenport, a Southern California native, is one of the few Americans to break into the Top 10 among ranked women.

(2) Michael Chang, alive in the semifinals of the U.S. Open, is a product of the U.S. youth movement in tennis, but he's an exception.

Harry Hamburg / New York Daily News