Tennis / Lipton Championships: Courier loses his sense of balance

WHEN his chair began to shake here at the Lipton Championships, Dana Loconto, an umpire from Alabama, may have imagined that the weather was turning nasty again. He discovered that the hands of an angry Jim Courier were responsible for the disturbance.

The world No 1 was on the way to his second defeat of the year and was not happy with some of the line calls, a not uncommon occurrence when frustration grips the court elite. What really upset Courier's equilibrium was the potent serving and wicked slices of his opponent, Mark Woodforde. The eager Australian left-hander was about to elevate himself into the top 20 for the first time in his career.

Courier, 1-4 down in the final set of their quarter-final match, attacked the umpire's chair before plonking himself into his own during the changeover. Loconto penalised the Floridan with a code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct. He later fudged the issue, sparing the player a fine, even though Courier had expressed his opinion of the line-calling in colourful terms.

At the conclusion of the match, Courier congratulated Woodforde on his victory, 6-3, 2-6, 6-2, and also shook hands with Loconto before elaborating on the earlier comments to the umpire. 'I said it was a poor performance,' Courier said. 'I had a poor performance, and he had a poor performance in the chair.'

Courier was not exactly penitent: 'We all do things we regret in the heat of the moment. I don't regret anything. Dana and I are good friends. I like Dana a lot. The calls were tough for him. I'm not asking for any special favours. I just want the calls to be made right.'

Though perceived as one of the sport's less turbulent personalities, Courier does sometimes lose his temper. While successfully defending his Australian Open title in January, for example, he was fined for making a one-finger gesture to an umpire. 'I try to keep everything cool, and occasionally it gets to the point where I need to have a release,' he said at the time. 'I try and have one release, and not more than one, and then try and retreat back inside.'

If Courier is usually on good terms with Loconto, he is even more friendly with Woodforde. The pair frequently practise together. To his credit, Courier praised Woodforde's superior play rather than attempting to seek refuge in the fact that it was his second match of the day (on Thursday morning he defeated Mikael Pernfors).

Before encountering Woodforde, the only blip on Courier's 20-match record for the year was a straight-sets defeat by Derrick Rostagno, an American compatriot, in Philadelphia last month. The 27-year-old Australian now leads Courier 2-1 in their series, having defeated him at Wimbledon in 1990 and lost to him in San Francisco last year.

Woodforde's victory here was all the sweeter in view of next week's Davis Cup tie against the Americans in Melbourne, for which Courier, Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras have declined to travel. 'Someone in the locker-room was saying that the US was sending a B team down,' Woodforde said. 'I don't think they're sending a B team in the first place, and maybe if Jim came down he would have a hard time anyway.'

The grass at Kooyong is likely to prove more durable than the rubberised Centre Court has been here. Matches had to be switched again yesterday when the surface began to peel underfoot for the second consecutive day.

Results, Sport in Short, page 55