College Sports on the Brink of Disaster by John LeBar

Author:John LeBar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sports Publishing

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A Life in Full

Mark Meyers was my first scholarship player, the best recruiting decision I ever made, a great competitor who still holds the highest winning percentage of any player who ever toted a tennis racquet for Duke. He was singularly observant, thoughtful, self-possessed and, without a doubt, remarkably understated. Most memorably, his corkscrew backhand was so good it became a powerful offensive weapon; among all the players I coached, his backhand was the strongest and most consistent, among the very best I ever saw. That said, I would venture to say his career path had more than a hint of predictability: a corporate man through and through; a trusted attorney at Shell Oil who negotiated high-value ocean drilling rights with foreign governments from the Gulf of Mexico to the South China Sea; a man of the world with somewhat ordinary tastes. Was his ultra-unorthodox corkscrew backhand — that long, graceful flowing motion up and over the ball, imparting such explosive topspin — in any way the harbinger of the about turn his somewhat staid life one day would take? Did that extraordinary stroke — which he practiced so long and hard — foretell of the iconoclast who would come to follow, in a biblical sense, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night?

To explore these questions, I must first describe Mark’s early life and certain influences that profoundly shaped his worldview and character.

Mark grew up playing at the oldest tennis club in America, founded in 1876 — the New Orleans Lawn Tennis Club, whose pro, Emmett Paré, had starred on the early pro tour as a playing companion of the legendary Bill Tilden. When his playing days ended, Paré took two jobs: head pro at the New Orleans Club and tennis coach at Tulane University, where he soon built a national powerhouse. During his long career at Tulane, Paré’s teams would win 18 Southeastern Conference championships and one national championship and boast eight NCAA singles and two NCAA doubles champions. His forte was teaching classic stokes and mental toughness; and at 9 a.m. every Saturday, Paré gave a lesson to young Mark Meyers on the finer points of the game, including tactics and strategy. Learning from Paré on the Club’s clay courts, where the pacing was much slower than on hard courts, forced the young comer to develop flawless ground strokes. No wonder, then, that by age 12, Mark was the seventh-ranked junior in the nation, or that by the time he got to Duke, he was second-ranked in the South and ninth-ranked nationally in his age category.

He and his brother, Bill, who was four years older, traveled widely and alone by train to play in junior tournaments in places like Atlanta, Jackson and Chattanooga. Bill would go on to become a tennis star at Northwestern University. He finished first in his medical school class at Louisiana State University and is considered one of the leading gastroenterologists in the South today.

It was always

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