France’s No. 1 Clown Still Unappreciated

WIMBLEDON, England —  Some of those players who show no personality on the stage of tennis, or have none to show, perhaps resent the attention paid to those who do play to the crowd, who do turn their rackets into make-believe tommyguns or banjos, who do strut around like Mick Jagger with a stubbed toe, who do radiate a special warmth toward the audience, as does Henri Leconte.

Just as those who cannot do often teach, a tennis player who cannot win often clowns. Players like Ivan Lendl believe sincerely that the game is serious business, and that there is another time, another place, for showmanship and fooling around. Lendl, it has been said, would prefer that significant tennis tournaments be played at stadiums with unlisted telephone numbers and seating capacities of zero.

Every player has his own approach to the game, to the gallery, and, particularly, to the opposition. “There’s a difference between Lendl and (Mats) Wilander and (John) McEnroe,” says Leconte, the light-hearted 22-year-old Frenchman. “Lendl wants to win everything, and that takes a special mentality. Wilander is cool. McEnroe wants to kill everybody.”

Leconte just wants to live and let live. He is neither obsessed with success nor determined to convince the crowd, as many of his colleagues do, that the expression of a lemon-sucker is his natural disposition. Leconte is one of France’s funniest fellows.

And yet, there is one place in the world of tennis where Leconte’s on-court hijinks are not appreciated. One place where everybody does not love a clown.

That place is France.

“They like my antics in England and in Australia and in the (United) States and in Germany. But in France, it is different,” Leconte says. “In France, they do not like me to make gestures. They think I have a big head.

“If I lose the first serve, they make a noise. When I am playing well, they are for me. When I am playing badly, they are not for me.”

What did W.C. Fields say about always wanting to see Paris, but Philadelphia would do? Leconte knows the feeling. He is treated in his homeland the way Phillies and Eagles are treated by some of America’s hardest-to-please crowds. Small wonder, then, that Leconte now makes his home in London, where anything resembling a local tennis hero is welcomed with open arms.

During the first week of Wimbledon, Leconte definitely had the crowds on his side as he danced through his first three matches. Of all the men here, only two, Leconte and Lendl, have gotten this far without dropping a set. “Hooray, Henri!” the Britons shout. Ooh-ray, On-ree!

He is a dandy, born on the Fourth of July. By his 23rd birthday he could be in hot pursuit of the greatest tennis accomplishment of his career, this dashing young Frenchman who is the only remaining left-hander in the men’s end of the tournament. He must get by Australia’s John Fitzgerald next, then either Wilander or Pat Cash, then, in all likelihood, Boris Becker to reach the final.

He has never won a major event--but remember, neither had Becker. It was the West German teen angel who eliminated Leconte in the quarterfinals a year ago, right after Leconte had done the same foul deed to Lendl.

No one beats Lendl as often as Leconte does. “When I see him playing other players, he seems to miss a lot,” Lendl said. “Against me, he forgets to miss.”

Leconte also has beaten McEnroe and he has beaten Bjorn Borg. But his 1985 U.S. Open ended with a loss to Heinz Gunthardt, and during the year he won but two minor tournaments. Not once has Leconte been beyond the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam event.

“The French think he’s a choker,” Britain’s Virginia Wade said only recently.

Leconte has played matches in France during which his own countrymen have sided with his foreign opponent, much the way the Americanization of Martina Navratilova has not enabled her to capture the U.S. Open crowds, even when her opponent is someone like Hana Mandlikova, who still prefers Prague to Fort Worth.

There was, at least, a day last June when Leconte strode onto the red clay of Roland Garros Stadium in Paris and did not leave feeling unloved. When he defeated countryman Yannick Noah, the first time he had ever done so, in five pulse-racing sets, the crowd applauded the winner, and applauded even louder when he and Noah left the premises together, arm in arm.

It is difficult to imagine someone who would not enjoy seeing Lefty Leconte in action, who would suffer ennui watching Henri. He is a swashbuckler, a demonstrative and carefree player who prances after successful shots and collapses in a heap, prostrate, when something goes wrong. He is Jimmy Connors without the wickedness, without the harping at judges in their high-chairs, without the pained look of a Lendl who acts as though anyone who calls a ball “in” that should have been out, or vice versa, must have had an ulterior motive against him.

Leconte just takes it easy. He has had hepatitis and chest pains in the last year, and has taken leaves of absence from the game. For that is what it is, a game.

“I am playing tennis because I love to play tennis, not like a businessman only for money,” he said. “If I play well in tournaments, I get money. If not, I get nothing. But it is a game first of all. It is not a Formula One race out there. It is not life or death every time you go out.”

With guys like this, down 6-love means never having to say you are sorry. Viva Leconte.