Newport Teen Courts a Pro Tennis Career

NEWPORT BEACH — See, what teenager Brandis Braverman thinks is cool is so not about boys and dances and high school friends--she skipped that whole scene. Here is what’s cool to Braverman, a top-ranked U.S. girls’ tennis player:

Monday, in Milan, Braverman begins a four-month round of key international and national tournaments that could catapult her from the top junior ranks to the pros, alongside the likes of Steffi Graf and Pete Sampras.

This is the summer she has worked for since age 2, when she first held a sawed-off tennis racket. She has missed five Thanksgivings in a row for this, playing tournaments in places she never heard of, blasting 105-mph serves before an audience of three in The-Middle-of-Nowhere, Italy.

See, she can’t feel the calluses rippling across her slender hands (she jokes that she uses her hand as a spatula while barbecuing). She actually likes the days when she trains so hard that her legs turn to Jell-O. And she didn’t even mind the Melbourne tournament, where the 100-degree-plus heat baked the hard court to a sticky crisp that ripped open her tennis shoe.

What matters is this: At 17, Braverman is finally gunning for the pros.

Braverman didn’t rocket to the top like Switzerland’s Martina Hingis, 16, the world’s No. 1-ranked women’s player. Instead, she fought her way up to the brink of professional tennis with unshakable confidence, even when she was losing to weaker players. Within a year, she ripped up the junior ranks to move from No. 39 to the No. 1 spot in January.

“I’ll go further to do what it takes than anybody else will [in U.S. juniors],” Braverman said, without a trace of self-consciousness. “I do have that extra something--something special--to try to take it to the next level.”

She has no more homework worries--she got her high school diploma at 16 by studying with a private tutor.

Already, Braverman travels so much that she leaves her brimming suitcase open on her bedroom floor and lives out of it. At big tournaments, she runs into the superstars like Andre Agassi, who say hey to her in the players’ lounge. Her sponsors, including Nike and Reebok, fill her old toy chest with free tennis shoes and hats--and then send boxes more.

She travels with five other girls on the United States Tennis Assn. national team, which represents the country at international tournaments and other appearances. For most of this year, she has been on the road, calling home to her mother and two little sisters at least three times a day (her parents are divorced, and she doesn’t see her father much).

Her family doesn’t worry about the plunge into the pro ranks, which has swallowed up teenagers like promising ex-star Jennifer Capriati. The world’s press pummeled Capriati, who turned pro in 1990 at age 13 and then fell into shoplifting, drugs and disgrace.

Said Natalie Braverman, 13, about her big sister: “She’s, like, really wise, and she knows the right things to do, and I can never see her pulling a Jennifer Capriati.”

*

Braverman couldn’t think of the worst thing she ever did while growing up in Encino. Her mother, Georgia, who is in her early 40s, finally came up with something: At age 9, she cut school to watch her mother play in the finals of a local tennis tournament.

Georgia Braverman started tossing her daughter tennis balls in the living room as soon as she could walk, just for fun. By age 4, Braverman was hitting balls with her father, attorney Hank Braverman, in the backyard and whacking a few through the windows.

At that age, tennis was just something she did, along with swimming, horseback riding and soccer. She was fearless and never sat still. At the park, she always headed for the tallest slide, the biggest swing.

At 7, she won the first tennis tournament she entered. At 8, she was a skinny girl with a big two-handed backhand who could beat 12-year-old boys. At 11, she could beat her father, who is a top club-level player. By then, she pictured herself hoisting the Wimbledon championship plate high above her head on Centre Court.

*

School was a chore. Every day, she was the last one there, the first one gone. Without studying much, she got A’s and Bs.

Her mother kept close watch as she blew through bigger and bigger tournaments. At 12 or so, most girls who play tennis are about the same size and strength; the winners are the mentally tough ones. Her daughter, Georgia Braverman noticed, had a killer instinct.

Others noticed too. Tennis coaches began pulling Georgia Braverman aside and telling her that Brandis was exceptional.

Brandis Braverman, who was running out of practice partners, began hitting with college players, including Karen Shin, then the No. 1-ranked player at UC Berkeley.

“I felt like I was always talking to a little adult, even when she was 10,” said Shin, an attorney, who also played professional tennis.

By 14, Braverman knew she wanted tennis to take over her life. Already, she had been getting up at 5 a.m. to play tennis before school, trying to find the ball in the darkness and fog.

She talked to pros who told her how tough it was to break into the top international ranks. She would have to travel 40 weeks a year, play in lousy places.

She sat down with her mother and coach, and together they decided. She would drop out of school, study with a tutor and do nothing but play tennis. Her parents never pushed her, Braverman said.

After that, her school friends started to drop off. She couldn’t go to Friday night dances with them if she had a match the next morning at 8.

“It’s almost like I went from childhood straight into adulthood,” Braverman recalled.

If she got injured or stopped winning, she thought she could try college tennis or sports-related jobs, such as TV commentary. But nothing stopped her.

Since 14, her life has been a blur of travel and tennis. At first, she took some hard losses at national tournaments. But even then, she thought she lost only because of her own silly errors, not because the other girl was better.

Last year, she began a steady climb to the top, although her juniors ranking recently dropped to No. 2.

Her parents had the same competitive drive, she said. She used to watch her father play tennis against her coach for money, and then the two would double-or-nothing on a game of pingpong.

Braverman will bet on anything, from the Kentucky Derby to practice points against her coach, Ross Case. Case, 45, won the Wimbledon doubles championship in 1977, and was once ranked No. 13 in the world in singles. He fights for every point with her.

In the past few weeks, Braverman--who is 5-foot-6, 120 pounds--started working out with a trainer for the first time. She has a killer schedule of squats, lunges and sprints to get ready for pro events this summer, including a possible spot in the main draw of the U.S. Open in August with the world’s best women players.

She says she’s a little anxious about her upcoming tournaments but not nervous. The only sign of stress her mother ever notices is the way she gets quiet before a big match.

On the road, she will miss her family and three cats that sleep with her--Wimbledon, French and Ace. But she has never minded the grind.

“I . . . felt that this was my destiny, so why do anything to stand in the way of what I thought was going to be my fate, you know?” Braverman said.

*

She doesn’t think she’s missing anything.

Malls bore her. She never sleeps late because lounging in bed bores her. She can’t get through a long massage without getting bored.

She won’t have time for a steady boyfriend until she retires from the pro circuit in 10 years or so. Not when she thinks about tennis all day and then replays matches in her dreams, point by point.

“Where am I going to fit that in right now? . . . A guy has a lot of energy and would want to go out at night and go to the movies and stuff, and by the end of the day, I’m tired.

“That becomes another responsibility, another person you have to talk to when you’re traveling away, another thing to think about and worry about. . . . And not many guys are going to want to play second fiddle to a tennis ball, either, you know?”

Guys notice her.

Recently, she put on a short champagne-colored dress and pumps for a wedding in Santa Monica. A 30-year-old stockbroker from Florida slipped his phone number to her. Her mother, who tore it up, tells the story with a laugh.

Usually, Braverman is in jeans or shorts and a T-shirt, with her hair pulled into a ponytail and no makeup. On the court, she is poker-faced but not above playing the crowd. She will flash a killer smile or pump a fist in the air.

She jumps on questions the way she does a tennis ball. She anticipates, sometimes answering before the question is finished, and shoots back answers in an even, serious tone.

Sometimes, her mother has to press her to recount a conversation. Well? What did he say? And then what did you say?

*

Braverman is close to her mother and sisters, who moved to Newport Beach together 10 months ago after her parents’ divorce.

She drives her sisters--Natalie, 13, and Jill, 7--everywhere in her zippy red sports car, maybe a little too fast.

“Drive SLOW!” her mother implores.

She and her sisters go to movies together and to Friday night buffets at the Balboa Bay Club. Most nights, she jumps into the Jacuzzi and is in bed by 10 p.m.

At home, she leans on her mom when she’s tired.

“Mommy,” she begged on a recent afternoon after practice, “can you make me something to eat . . . a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich?”

On the road, she doesn’t want her mother to worry about her.

“My mother has enough worries on her mind,” Braverman said. “She doesn’t need to have a wild 17-year-old running around the world at tennis tournaments. I try to make it easy for the coaches, the USTA and for her to know that I’m pretty focused on what I’m there to do.”

The worst thing she does is sometimes break down and indulge in a chicken taco.

Pros don’t fool around, you know, though she does admire Agassi for the fun he has brought to the game.

And the women players? Who are her idols?

She declines to answer. See, you can’t have idols when you think you’re in the same ballpark as everyone else.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile: Brandis Braverman

Age: 17

Home: Newport Beach

Tennis career: Ranked either No. 1 or No. 2 in U.S. girls’ tennis; member, U.S. Tennis Assn. national team; No. 24 ranked girls’ player in the world

Upcoming schedule includes: Junior tournaments at the Italian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open; pro tournaments in Wilmington, Del.; Fayetteville, N.C.; and Roanoke, Va.

Sponsors: Nike clothes and shoes, Reebok clothes, Prince racquets, Oakley sunglasses, Gosen strings

Hobbies: Pingpong, swimming, cooking

Early Observation: “Even at [age 10], I was like, what better to do than get paid for something you love doing? I figured if I had fun playing on a little court, I’d have just as much fun on Centre Court at Wimbledon.”

Source: Brandis Braverman