MICHAEL CHANG of Placentia, Calif, is, in fact, the new US, junior champion and last week’s new Yank hope, At Flushing Meadow a worldly British writer viewed the stands (and press section) packed with Pollyanna Americans who had come to see Chang play, and shook his head. “Oh my,” he said. “Now you Americans are getting as as desperate as we’ve been”.

‘Chang is indeed a bit special. The juniors are for players 18 and under and he’s only 15 1/2, which makes him the youngest male to compete in the US. championships since Vinnie Richards, who was 15 1/3 when he played in 1918, Moreover, Chang is only 5’8” and 131 pounds, with a sturdy pair of bowlegs, He’s also believed to be the first Chinese American male to play in the Open and one of the biggest Chinese American sports stars to burst onto the scene since the fabled Celestial Come, halfback Johnny Chung, put Plainfield (N.J.) Teac: hers College on the map in the fall of 1941

Better than most of the wide-eyed adults who followed him about last week, Change understood that he was as much a happy curiosity as he was the future. What made him so appealing was, as Chang himself put i, that he was “15 and stuff” and “Chinese and stuff”. It also didn’t hurt that anybody could tell he was a whale of a nice Kid. Michael hates to beat his ‘older brother Carl — an 18yearold ‘who ranked 19th in the juniors last year — because “I don’t want anybody to tease him and say, ‘Gee, you lost to your little brother”.

‘Nobody at Flushing Meadow had heard of Chang until he whipped Paul McNamee in four sets in the first round. Chang was seeded only six that last month’s US. Junior Championships in Kalamazoo, Mich. Until that time none of the experts was touting Chang (or anybody else) as saviour potential. But the big thing about the junior championships is that, like the

Democratic presidential nomination and the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, somebody has to win it. Usually the attention directed to the Victorious kid is a measured in inverse proportion to how the adult U.S. male players are faring. Nobody even knew ‘we had a junior champion when Ashe, Smith, Connors, and McEnroe were riding high.

‘The Changes understand this. Joe ‘Chang, Michael and Car’ father had and coach, is a chemist for Unocal Sure, his son was staring at the US. ‘Open, but Joe had business in North ‘Carolina, s0 he stayed down there and let his wife, Betty, and other family ‘members tend to tennis things, Naturally, a lot of folks were blowing smoke in Betty’s face, “There’s no rush”, she said calmly. “Michaels still just a little boy, and I want to keep him that way”,

Michael! Has already declined an invitation to try out for the Junior Davis Cup team, “I could miss out on being a 15yearold,” he said, “and then, you know life could get boring”.

Everybody sees the way for the US, to return to the top in tennis — in his ‘own mirror, Boris Becker, for example, suggests that like Chang should quit school! And get on with it, just as Boris did,

Ivan Lendl says they “must work their bum off” and then play in easy tournaments to “learn how to win, and then work their bum off” again in Difficult tournaments to experience defeat. Olga Morozova, a Wimbledon finalist in 1974 who now is coach of the revived Soviet team, says, “You need a national team with an experience coach who works hard and is not to be on TV all the time, saying this and that.

Now that tennis is an Olympic sport, the Russians are going whole hog; the team has a clothing contract. With Nike and is represented by Proserv, the player management firm. Wimbledon was on Soviet TV for several hours a day this summer, and privileged Soviets are building neighborhood tennis clubs, But, Morozova says, the USSR is so powerful in world sport that the people are “spoiled” and need a big star before tennis really gets hot. Sound familiar?

One Soyiet player, Andrei Chesnokov, a human backboard in wrinkled clothes and droopy socks who makes the Swedes seem scintillating, reached the round of 16 at Flushing Meadow last year. Last week, the draw exploded hole for him that was bigger than the one Mathias Rust found in Soviet air defenses. But the big Soviet hope is Natalia Zvereva, ‘who’s bright and peppy and only 10 months older than Chang, Chris Evert clobbered her in the third round on Sunday, but as Morozova says, “People from cold climates grow up later”

If the USSR. gets a box-office star, that player might get peeved at having all the rubles sent back to the national federation while his or her opponents are buying estates in Connecticut Morozova, a delightful woman who favors Yves St. Laurent sunglasses, acknowledges that that ay must come if the glasnost gang stays on tour, ‘which it must do to stay competitive for Seoul and, more realistically, for Barcelona in ‘92, “I will say something”, she says, “but the time is not far now”.

Big-time tennis has two distinct faces. Off the court, it is all American, Everybody talks American, dresses American, rocks American, looks ‘American and more or Less, wants to ‘be American. On the court, however, the nationalistic European system is what builds winners. It is no coincidence that the dominant champions of the midB0s have been Martina Navratilova and Lendl, who were born European and train European but live American. The US. No less than the USS.R. must understand that reality, and the US. Tennis Association took a first step the other day when it proposed a European type system for finding and schooling American talent.

‘Chang is an anomaly because Asian Americans have seldom been noted for their athletic prowess. But how about Chung, the Celestial Comet, who became famous when his gridiron exploits were reported in newspapers week after week? In fact, he didn’t exist. The Chinese halfback was one of the greatest hoaxes in US. Sports history.

But Chang is quite real. And so far that matter, is Tommy Ho, a 14 year old Chinese American from Winter Haven, Fla., who some think is an even better prospect. Asian American kids are on the cover of Time, win all the science competitions and flood the best campuses, Chang is Chinese chic and never mind that he lot in the second round to Duke Odizor, 29, of Nigeria, The American kid fought ‘back being down 61, 62 to carry Odizor five sets,

Chang’s grandfather, Michel ‘Tung, waited for him after the match. Tung grew up in Hankow, fled to ‘Taiwan when Mao took over in 1949 and eventually brought his family to ‘America, Someone said he must be proud of his grandson, “Yes, but lam proud of my daughter, too”, he said. “I ‘m proud of Betty that she brought up such a wonderful son of the United States”.

Article extracted from this publication >>  September 25, 1987