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Chang Spends His Play Time Working Hard

Michael Chang is the antithesis of your average big-name player at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic, one of the hottest, most grueling tournaments on the men’s tour. He never tanks. Never. Not even for a set.

Here’s a perfect example: Last night at William H.G. FitzGerald Tennis Center, Chang was down 4-1 to Brett Steven in the second set of a semifinal match. He already had the first set in his pocket. He knew he was going to have to be back here in less than 24 hours for the final. So it wouldn’t have come as much of a surprise if Chang just let the set go and saved his energy for the third.

Not Chang. He held for 4-2, broke for 4-3, held for 4-4 and clawed his way to a tiebreaker, which he won, 7-4. Work done, day over. The thought of tanking the second set never even occurred to him.

"Even at 4-1, it’s only one break, and I feel like, in certain situations like that, I don’t feel comfortable giving anybody anything," Chang said. "If they go out and earn it, win 6-1, fine .‚.‚. [but] that’s just not the way I go about playing tennis."

With Andre Agassi gone after a less-than-stellar first match, Chang is the lone tennis "star" here, so to speak. He’s the top seed, the second-ranked player in the world. For those who don’t follow tennis closely—for those who just watch the Grand Slam tournaments— that ranking often comes as a surprise. Sure, people know Chang is a top player, a consistent top 10 guy, but No. 2? This is a player who hasn’t won a Grand Slam since he emerged on the scene with a French Open title in 1989, when he was 17. Save for poor Goran Ivanisevic—the best player in the world never to win a Grand Slam title—Chang has had some of the worst luck of anyone around.

And he’s still the best tennis has, save for Pete Sampras, and that’s saying something, given that Sampras is the best tennis has ever had. But if Sampras is considered boring, then Chang is just, well, not considered at all.

"I don’t mind," Chang said, "going about things a little bit quieter."

This is Chang: consistent, methodical, deliberate, focused. His greatest gift is that he never, ever gives up in a match. His greatest strength is his baseline game. He can play an all-court game, he just doesn’t like to. He’d prefer to sit at the baseline, pounding ball after ball after ball at his opponent—and the longer the point goes, the better off he is. If Chang were a hockey team, he’d be the New Jersey Devils. All hail the neutral-zone trap.

Still, it pays off. Chang already has won four tournaments this year, and if he captures his fifth here today, he’ll lead the ATP Tour in tournament titles this season. His opponent in the final is Petr Korda, a Czech who has been relatively whiny this week—complaining about the tournament food, the weather, the calls and, most of all, the fact that he has had to play afternoon matches while Chang (and Agassi, for the brief period he hung around) has played at night.

Chang got the preferred night schedule because he is the top seed, but he still should be grateful, given that court temperatures have been horrendous and he, of all people, tends to play long, drawn-out matches that aren’t much fun in the heat. In his first two outings, Chang got pushed to three sets in what appeared to be subpar performances. Subpar perhaps, but not at all surprising. If he’s in a best-of-three tournament, Chang tends to play three sets. If he’s playing a Grand Slam, expect five. "Expeditious" is not one of his favored adjectives.

And if you want to know why the world’s No. 2 player hasn’t won a Grand Slam in eight years, it’s probably for that reason. While he’s playing five-set affairs in the early rounds of the two-week Grand Slams, the other top players are brushing off the competition in easy straight-set meetings. By the time Chang gets to the end of Week 2, he’s slowing down. It doesn’t matter that he’s one of the best-conditioned players in the game. All that tennis takes its toll.

That showed last September, when Chang made it to the U.S. Open final, then barely put up a fight against Sampras. And his one Grand Slam title? It took Chang five sets and a grueling 4 hours 37 minutes to beat Stefan Edberg.

Despite his all-American work ethic, Chang has never been fully embraced by the U.S. public the way other top players have been. He went virtually unrecognized on his flight into D.C. last weekend. And when he showed up yesterday for a solo practice session hours before his match, Chang slipped in and out of the tournament grounds with barely an autograph seeker to be found. His relative anonymity is probably because Chang’s personality is much like his tennis: thoughtful and deliberate but rarely flashy. He is calm, and consistent, and even a little bit dull. One of his biggest non-tennis related endorsement deals is with the Discover Card, which runs a commercial that supposedly reveals what charges are on his statement. He seems like something of an odd choice for that kind of ad—after all, there are plenty of athletes out there who probably have far more diverse and, ahem, interesting items listed on their charge accounts (Dennis Rodman, anyone?). Chang’s charges (yawn) include mainly tennis balls and fishing equipment.

In perfect keeping with his personality, Chang is an avid fisherman—so much so that he’s a spokesperson for the National Fish and Wildlife Federation. And if he were like a lot of other players, Chang might have been out of this hotbox on Wednesday morning, off to someplace like Minnesota, where he could bait a hook and sit in the shade. He’s not. Chang’s sneakers might melt on Stadium Court today, but he’ll be here. And there won’t be one moment when he doesn’t give it his all.