Determined Phebus Works on Her Return

NEWPORT BEACH —  For Keri Phebus, tennis success could almost be taken for granted.

She was the nation’s No. 1-ranked junior player in the girls’ 12s, 14s and 16s and was No. 2 in the 18s while she was growing up in Newport Beach. Then at UCLA, she reached the NCAA singles finals as a sophomore, and won the national championship in 1995 as a junior.

“Everything was going so smooth,” she recalled.

As the NCAA champion, she was invited to play in the U.S. Open, where she won one match, and she also played in women’s pro tour events at La Costa and Manhattan Beach.

“I turned down around $50,000 I could have won that summer to be able to play my senior year at UCLA,” Phebus said. “And even though I announced that I was going back to school in the fall, people would still call and ask me if I was sure about it. I was thinking all those opportunities would still be there later.”

But then, for the first time in her tennis career, Phebus ran into some difficult times: a split with her longtime coach, the disappointment of not repeating as NCAA singles champion last spring and an agonizing struggle with foot problems that lingered into the summer.

This weekend, Phebus will take another step in her comeback as she attempts to qualify for a spot in the $25,000 Pacific Mutual/USTA Women’s Challenger of Newport Beach, a satellite tournament a rung below the regular Women’s Tennis Assn. pro tour. The qualifying rounds are today through Tuesday with the main draw beginning Tuesday at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Tennis Club.

Phebus knows it’s the kind of challenge she’ll be facing regularly when she begins her pro career in earnest in January. She needs only eight units to complete work on her degree in sociology at UCLA, and she intends to do that this fall.

And, by January, she hopes the disappointments of the past year will be only a memory.

“It seems like it was always one thing or another there for a while,” she said. “I’d never had that kind of adversity before. But I think I’ve gained a lot of character in the past year too, and maybe it will help me be more ready for the pro tour.”

Phebus recalls that it was about this time last year when she and Myron McNamara, her tennis coach since she was 6, went their separate ways. She says it was one of the low points emotionally for her as a player.

“He apparently didn’t like that I was working with some other coaches also,” Phebus said. “But when he left, it hit me hard. I know it happens. A lot of players seem to be changing coaches every two weeks, but he was a lot more than that to me. I not only lost my coach, I lost my best friend. And he had a lot to do with my success in tennis.”

Phebus also ran into some health problems. Plantar warts, which are caused by a virus, developed on the bottom of her feet during the tennis season.

“It was only a couple at first, but then they got worse,” she said. “They can be excruciatingly painful, and they kept coming back. It was like stepping on bee stings.”

They were at their worst in the humidity at the NCAA tournament in Tallahassee, Fla. “They seemed to explode in that heat,” she said.

Phebus also had problems with dehydration in the singles quarterfinal she lost in three sets to Stanford’s Ania Bleszynski.

Stella Sampras, coach of the UCLA women’s team, believes the heat was an important factor in the match.

“Keri wasn’t playing as well as she had been earlier, and Ania played excellent in that match,” Sampras said.

“Keri has had problems with the heat before, and it’s a long two weeks with a lot of tennis. She had played very well for us in the team competition, and won every match.

“She had to play a lot the day before the quarterfinals, then having a 3 1/2-hour match can take a toll on you. It’s just unfortunate for Keri that it happened in that match.”

After that, Phebus withdrew from the doubles, which she and her partner also had won the previous year.

Sampras says she wasn’t aware at the time Phebus’ foot problems were so severe.

“I didn’t want to make a fuss about it or say that much because at that stage of the season, I just felt I had to grind it out,” Phebus said.

Phebus had foot surgery in June for the plantar warts, and didn’t resume playing for more than a month.

“I went through a phase of being real down for a while,” she said. “I was really disappointed by not winning the NCAAs after being favored. I’m trying to look at it now as a testing block for me as a player.”

Sampras says she has no doubt that Phebus will persevere and become a solid pro player. “You can never count Keri out,” she said. “She always seems to come through. That’s the kind of tennis player she is.”

And Phebus is back in an up-beat mood, healthy again.

There is spring, not pain in her step.

“I just want to get into some matches and get my confidence back,” she said. “I have to work my way back up, and I know I can do that.”