From the backless aluminum bleachers, maybe 50 feet away, he looked like the same Brian Baker who buzzed through the field at the 2002 Orange Bowl junior championships, or the same spindly teenager who beat down Marcos Baghdatis and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga before losing the 2003 French Open junior final to Stan Wawrinka.
But those memorable days are way back there in the rear view mirror and, after five surgeries, three on his hips, plural, he may look the same from a distance, but the inner body, he will tell you, is different.
Things are a little more fragile now, and nine months into a comeback after a long absence from the ATP tour, Baker is less concerned about setting goals for number of wins than he is just staying uninjured and fit enough to play from week to week. He diligently makes sure he doesn’t over-train, fearful of getting hurt not in a match but working out on an off-week.
And so far, not too bad. When he returned to professional tennis last July, in relative obscurity at a Challenger in Pittsburgh, he was No. 752. Today, after getting through a third and final qualifying match at the $100,000 Challenger in Sarasota, Fl., he is No. 313.
I’m not getting overly excited here because, except for a few matches in 2007, Baker has been effectively out of pro tennis for seven years, and that’s a long hiatus from which to build a comeback. Still, just seeing him back on court Monday was a treat for those of us who remember what we thought he could become.
He wasn’t quite Andy Roddick, who turned pro with a 140 mph serve after winning the Australian Open juniors. But it would be wrong to say that Baker was merely just another U.S. prospect. He wasn’t one of those undersized, counter-punching juniors who got by on defense. He was 6-foot-3 with physical upside and a fearsome ability to take the ball early.
When he turned professional in May of 2003, just before the French juniors, he already had a pro quality backhand that, with nurturing and experience, could turn into a bonafide world-class backhand. And he had something rarely seen in players that young. Mentally, he understood the game as few teenagers do. Shot selection. . .ability to construct points. . .patience to grind. It was all there for him.
Beating Denes Lukacs of Hungary (No. 404) in the final round of qualifying Monday afternoon by 6-1, 6-0 won’t make his career highlight reel, but it does send him into the main draw against fellow American Ryan Sweeting (No. 130) with a chance to start rolling up the ranking points Baker needs to get into the French Open quallies in late May.
Brian will turn 27 on April 30 and he’s going about this comeback with 27-year-old maturity.
“When you’ve missed as much time as I have, you don’t take anything for granted. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I’ve played enough tennis in my life to know that when you come back, a lot of tendencies come back, too. Still, I don’t know too many players who have taken off as much time as I have ”
A number of players who have had single hip surgeries never returned to their former proimnence (Magnus Norman, Gustavo Kuerten, Harel Levy). Baker has had three hip surgeries, all done by Dr. Richard Byrd of Nashville, who took care of Norman, Guga and Levy as well.
Why should Baker re-achieve where those players didn’t? Maybe, he believes, he has an advantage because his surgeries came at age 20, when his body was still relatively untouched by the wear and tear of tennis.
And yet how and why did this happen to someone so young? Two surgeries on the left hip, one on the right — all labrums.
“Part of it is genetic,” said Baker. “It’s just the way my hips were formed with not as much mobility for what’s needed in a physical game like tennis. Maybe I could have done more for my hips knowing the genetics. But, honestly, I don’t look back. I don’t like to play that game.”
Having grown up in Nashville, there was a clear advantage to working locally with Byrd, who is considered one of premier hip surgeons in the United States and he really is pain-free for now and, hopefully, into the future.
His first real hint of hip trouble came two weeks before the 2005 U.S. Open. In the second round of a Challenger at Binghamton, N.Y., Baker began feeling the pain. He plodded on, losing in the semis to then No. 145 Andy Murray. But he went to the Open, where he defeated No. 9 seeded Gaston Gaudio, the French Open champion, before losing second round to Xavier Malisse.
Two months later, he was in so much agony he went in for surgery. And more surgery. And still a third surgery.
He took more than a year off, tried to play a bit in 2007, but with great difficulty. At that point, he resigned himself to going back to school to get a degree in economics, while earning a few dollars working as assistant tennis coach at Belmont University in Nashville.
So he was, at least, hitting the ball daily and felt good enough to enter a few very small tournaments, where he learned that with all the strength training he had done, he felt good enough to contemplate a professional comeback. That was July of last year.
“I thought, ‘It’s now or never. I’m already 26 and I’ve got a year of college left, but I have some unfinished business.’ I decided to give it a try.”
He got into the Pittsburgh Challenger without a ranking, whisked through qualifying and the main draw without losing a set and, today, nine months later, he’s progressing. That’s about all you can say for now.
“There are a couple ranges of motion I can’t do with my hips, but it’s not like motions I’d do much with on a tennis court,” he said. “I still have a long way to go on flexibility and I need to get quicker. But I think my forehand is better, my backhand is just as good and I think I’m a smarter player — at least in my professionalism. The way I take care of things before and after a match.”
He didn’t mention the emotional lift he’s gotten from just back out there, competing. But he didn’t have to. You can see it in his eagerness on court — relaxed between points, almost hyper during points.
Baker is coachless for now, though he’s had some conversations with former coach Ricardo Acuna, who now works for the USTA. It would be interesting to see those two together again. Including qualifying matches, Baker is 29-9 since returning to the game last July — 11-5 in Challengers and 18-4 in the lesser, Futures events.
This isn’t a lark, he wants you to know. This isn’t just some wager with himself to see if he can play again. “I didn’t come back just to get where I was in the past. I really believe that if my body will cooperate, I can do well.”
Charles Bricker can be reached at nflwriterr@aol.com