[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 92 (Monday, July 17, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7010-S7012]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
A SMASHING SUCCESS
Mr. HELMS. Madam President, a noted sports figure in American sports
history once commented that ``Bragging ain't bragging if you can prove
it.''
On that basis, I want to brag a little bit about North Carolina which
has had its share of top sports figures--perhaps more than our share
when you consider such outstanding sports figures, past and present, as
Arnold Palmer, Catfish Hunter, Charlie ``Choo-Choo'' Justice, Michael
Jordan, Richard Petty, David Thompson, Sonny Jurgensen, Dean Smith,
Everett Case, Joe Gibbs, Enos Slaughter, and Wallace Wade, who by the
way took two teams from Duke University to the Rose Bowl. But he didn't
have to go very far for the second one because it was held in Durham,
NC, right after Pearl Harbor. It was feared that the Japanese might try
to bomb the stadium out in California, so they moved the whole thing
across the country to North Carolina--the only time the Rose Bowl was
not played in Pasadena.
But I don't recall any previous teenager--from anywhere--who has been
described as a ``tennis phenomenon who walks in Chris Evert's
footsteps''. But that's the accolade handed 14-year-old Alli Baker of
Raleigh my hometown--in the May edition of Metromagazine in a sparkling
and detailed piece by Patrik Jonsson, writing from Boca Raton, Florida.
As I read the tribute to Alli Baker, I was reminded that this young
lady is a great granddaughter of the late Lenox Dial Baker, one of
America's leading orthopedic surgeons. Dr. Baker almost single-handedly
founded a children's hospital, later named for him, at Duke University
Medical Center in Durham, where hundreds of crippled children's lives
have brightened and their lives improved because of Dr. Baker's
selfless and loving interest in them.
I am going to let the article about Alli Baker speak for itself.
Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the tribute to the amazing 14-
year-old Alli Baker by Patrik Jonsson be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Teenage Tennis Phenomenon Walks in Chris Evert's Footsteps
[From Metro Magazine, May 2000]
Boca Raton, Fla.--Alli Baker is fuming. Frustrated during a
drill at the Evert Tennis Academy, the 14-year-old tennis
phenomenon from Raleigh huffs and puffs as if she's about to
blow somebody's house down. Then a few easy ground strokes go
into the net. That's it. Baker's Volkl racket goes flying
into a patch of grass. Conversations hush. Eyes glance
sideways at the lithe, freckled Southern girl whom everybody
knows as the number one ranked 14-year-old in the country,
and the highest-ranked female player yet to come out of North
Carolina. The court mood tenses the way it used to when John
McEnroe yelled at refs, or when the young German Boris Becker
pumped his fists in defiance. This is just practice. Still,
being Alli Baker's rival right now seems like a very, very
bad idea.
``It's true, I get very competitive,'' says Baker, who is
also the seventh-ranked 16-and-under player in the country,
an hour before the brief blow-up on the court. ``I love to
win. It's my greatest strength.''
Tennis my not be a gritty contact sport, but it is, above
all, a game of mind over body. Anger and other unchecked
emotions are widely known top scatter the concentrations of
even the most experienced players in clutch situations. But
the coaches here already know that North Carolina's newest
sports star hones her on-court emotions, polishes them like
treasure, and beams them into that fuzzy yellow ball,
straight back at her opponents on the other side of the net
at center court. Indeed, she's beaten some of the world's
best tennis players in her age group by funneling her
competitive angst into devastating trickery.
``She's a very mature player,'' says her coach, John Evert,
the brother of Wimbledon champ Chris Evert, and a 17-year
coach in his own right. ``Her strength is that she figures
out how to play exactly to her opponents' weaknesses, and she
doesn't let herself get into the dumps.''
Last year, Baker won five tournament tie breakers in a row,
an almost unheard of feat that epitomizes her unwillingness
to lose. ``I've yet to see her play in a tournament,'' one of
the other Evert Academy coaches confides. ``But they say she
is very, very hungry.''
Don't get the wrong idea, though. Off the court, Alli Baker
is about as sweet as strawberry pie, as humble as corn pone.
Freckled, tan and every bit the exuberant teenager, she talks
about fashion, missing home, seeing the world (Paris is her
favorite city), bonding with tennis stars Monica Seles and
Martina Hingis, how she loves her mentor, Chris Evert, and
the life-affirming step she's getting ready to take into
professional tennis. She's making ``a million new friends''
while coaxing her Raleigh confidantes to hurry down to where
it's nice and warm and where the beaches stretch on and on.
So far, it's been a whirlwind tour from the halls of
Raleigh's Daniels Middle School to the star-studded tennis
courts of SoFla.
hanging in west boca
It's here--to the Evert Tennis Academy, near some of the
world's largest country clubs, where the average annual
income is $65,000 and where the warm prevailing winds collect
tall afternoon thunder clouds over the coast--that Alli
decided to come this spring after it became clear that to
follow her dream, she had to follow it right out of North
Carolina.
Although the family will stay in Raleigh, where dad Bill
Baker is a vice president for a major construction firm, the
family just bought a house across Glades Avenue in west
[[Page S7011]]
Boca as a permanent base here. Baker and her family made the
decision after acknowledging the lack of a steady stream of
crack practice partners and full-time coaches in Raleigh.
While Bill works and helps shuttle their second daughter, 11-
year-old Lenox, to her soccer games, mom Leigh Baker has
found a permanent seat on the red-eye to Boca.
Of course, there were some questions among family friends:
How could the Bakers send a 13-year-old (her birthday is in
April) off to fend for herself in such a competitive,
cutthroat world? Bill Baker has an easy answer: ``She called
yesterday from a hotel room overlooking Key Biscayne. She
said, `Dad, I'm here looking our over the bay and the blue
water. It's so beautiful here.' I think she's going to be all
right.''
If Baker has what it takes to be an international tennis
star, Evert Academy is where the transformation from
sharpshooting local kid to Grand Slam winning hardball player
will likely take place. It's a place where the phrase,
``Yeah, Agassi decided not to come down today,'' seems rote.
Don't be surprised to see top-ranked players such as France's
Sebastian Grosjean and Vince Spadea sweating through a four-
hour practice. Tiny, but fiery Amanda Coetzer shows up here
from time to time to practice--and to show the reverent young
ones how it's done.
On these finely groomed courts nestled amidst swaying
coconut palms is also where Chris Evert practices with
students three times a week, and where there's a
lyrical constant of English, French, Spanish and even
Czech spoken over the grunts of determined players
returning smashes. Bordered by dozens of clay and hard
courts, flanked by a beige dormitory hall, this tucked-
away facility is what the doorstep to the big time now
looks like for Alli Baker.
``Her dream is to be the top-ranked tennis player in the
world,'' says Bill Baker at his Raleigh office overlooking
Falls of the Neuse Road. ``We knew that wouldn't happen if
she stayed here. She's doing all this herself. All that we're
doing is making the sacrifices to provide her with the
opportunities to pursue this dream. Sometimes it's hard as a
parent to not get emotionally involved. But in the end, the
fire to do it has to come from within her.''
style points
Naturally athletic, Baker picked tennis over other sports
for reasons perhaps girls can best understand. First, it's
not so--she searches for the word--``tomboy-ish.'' The
outfits, in other words, look great. Plus, there's no
physical contact, only the physicality of pressurized felt
ball against tight catgut, the action crashing back and forth
across the net in an elaborate joust. It is a game you can
win by using your mind to imbue the body with the power of
wit, intensity and strategy.
``I think it's the best game out there for girls,'' she
says. ``You can play hard and be super-competitive--and you
can look good doing it.''
Indeed, Baker already has the fresh, jaunty look that has
potential sponsors swooning. With the exception of Adidas
(clothes) and Volkl (racket), Baker has so far turned down
major sponsorships. In April, she unofficially entered the
pro circuit at a minor qualifying event. This spring, she
will play pro tourneys in Little Rock and Hilton Head. But
she's still an amateur, meaning she can't take any winnings
home yet. Still, it's at those tournaments, as well as at her
new home base here in Boca, where she's getting the first
real taste of her new life and where she is, as Bill Baker
says, ``meeting a lot of people who have been where she wants
to go--including some who made it and some who didn't.''
Impressed with Baker's natural talent, intense
competitiveness and impressive number of wins against tough
players, the United States Tennis Association and John Evert,
now Baker's development coach, ``recruited'' her into the
program.
``She has shown great skill and promise, but this is the
time for her to get on the court and work hard, because this
is where it's going to get tougher now,'' says Ricardo Acuna,
USTA's Southeast region coach, who oversees Baker's overall
training program.
For coaches like Evert and Acuna, right now is when the
ball meets the clay for the great-granddaughter of the late
Sports Hall of Famer Lenox Baker, the famed Duke orthopedic
surgeon and sports medicine pioneer, and the granddaughter of
single-handicappers Robert F. Baker and Robert M. Hines of
Raleigh, the five-time Carolina Country Club Senior
Championship winner. Wedged between childhood and the
muscular 16- and 17-year-olds playing above her, this is when
this next generation Baker has to concentrate more on
fundamentals than winning--a difficult task for someone who
has gotten used to eating victories for lunch. She says she
still lags behind some of her key competitors as far as
skills go. ``Ground strokes are about the only part of my
game I'm really good at,'' she admits.
``She's had a pretty easy time with practices up to this
point, where she's been able to turn it up and win matches,''
says Evert. ``But now I'm trying to figure out how she can
match that intensity during practice. At this point, I'm even
ready to cut back on her practice time to foster that
intensity. For Alli right now, quality is more important than
quantity.''
The Chrissie Factor
Although other tennis academies offer similarly competitive
programs, here Baker is becoming a member of the Famed Evert
family tennis tradition, which began with legendary tennis
coach Jim Evert's long-time directorship of Fort Lauderdale's
public Holiday Park tennis program from which Chris Evert
emanated. Indeed, it may have been the ``Chrissie presence''
that finally convinced the Bakers to make the move.
Having a role model like Chris Evert, who won 18 grand
slams and 159 tournaments before retiring in 1989, rifling
balls at you from the other side of the net is unbelievable,
Baker says. ``I just love her. She comes out here to
practice, and she still plays really hard. My mom says she
would love to have her body.''
But Baker and Evert are not two peas in a pod as far as
playing style. Evert was known for staring her opponents down
from the baseline, playing a cool-headed volley game. Fans
recall her ``icy stare'' that unnerved some opponents enough
to immobilize them. On the other hand, Baker loves to explode
to the net with a tenacity that dad Bill Baker says has also
yielded success in her doubles game.
Indeed, as Baker has served, sliced and backhanded her way
to the top of the rankings, from playing in tourneys from Rio
de Janeiro to Paris, comparisons run more to former teenage
phenomenon Monica Seles than to Evert or today's young
superstars like Serena and Venus Williams. ``She has to play
smarter because she's not as big as some of the other
players.'' says her dad.
Still, Baker's skinny frame is mentioned as a potential
liability, especially when matched against the new breed of
power players such as the Williams sisters, who tower above
their competitors.
But don't dismiss a growth spurt yet, says, Acuno, the USTA
coach. ``I've seen her increase in size by a lot just this
year,'' he adds confidently, While Baker sometimes has
trouble getting fired up for practice, she loves the weight
room and working out. As part of her routine at Evert Tennis
Academy, she endures a strenuous regimen along with nearly
four hours of court time a day against some of the best young
players in the world.
Despite her early success, it's still not advantage Baker.
Most of her competitors were already enrolled in tennis
academies when then 8-year-old Alli Baker started playing
with her mom at Carolina Country Club, drawn more to the
sport for the ``cute outfits'' than the competition. Other
tennis kids get started way before that, as evidenced by a
muffin-sized front-court player, perhaps 5 years old, who
spent two hours cranking backhands at her dad-slash-coach on
a recent day at the academy. The girl rode her pink Barbie
bike with training wheels off the court after the practice.
In Baker's case, however, her natural talents shone through
right away, and she quickly made up for lost time. She
started beating her mom as a 9-year-old--showing right off
the bat a natural inclination toward not just good tennis,
but winning tennis.
``It was a little bit later when I started to really like
the feeling of winning,'' she says. ``Before that, it was
just about the outfits and having fun with my friends.''
That love for the game and the big win is now starting to
pay off.
* * * * *
Interest in Baker began to percolate two years ago, when
USTA began sniffing around Raleigh, following rumors of a
phenom-in-the-making. After attending a few national camps
and doing well in a number of regional tournaments, Baker
bloomed for real last year.
Locally, North Hills Tennis Club coach Nancy Arndt, Raleigh
Racquet Club's Mike Leonard and Rali Bakita, and a handful of
other top-notch coaches worked on Baker's fundamentals,
knowing they had a potential star on their hands. But it was
at the Ace Tennis Academy in Atlanta, where Leigh Baker would
shuttle her daughter on weekends, that Baker culled those
extra pointers that propelled last year's successes.
Before last summer, Baker had already won both singles and
doubles at the coveted Easter Bowl, a triumph that sent her
like a projectile to the top ranking in the USTA under-14
category. Against older girls up to age 16, Baker is still
ranked number seven. Impressed with the wily Raleigh
youngster, CBS included Baker in a segment called ``Top
Spin'' last summer, along with Pete Sampras and Serena
Williams.
The Easter Bowl victory led to Baker's USTA National
Champion ribbon. She finished third in the World Cup held in
the Czech Republic last year. She was also a runner-up in the
Banana Bowl in Brazil, and a semi-finalist in the Acunsion
Bowl in Paraguay, and the Windmill Cup in the Netherlands.
This year she is again on the U.S. National Team and this
spring worked her way into the doubles finals tourneys in
London and France. Right now is when competitive circuits
around the world are really starting to heat up.
On top of the thrill of competition another boon to her
meteoric rise into international tennis is the gang of cool
friends. Baker is building around her. Currently, she e-mails
a dozen friends in Russia and France, as well as her clan of
pals and fans in Raleigh.
CHALLENGER FROM QUEENS
But Ally's best friend on the ground in Boca right now is a
gritty, 15-year-old power player from the blue-collar sky-
line of Queens, Shadisha Robinson. The two squared off
against each other last year where Baker came back from a
deep deficit, unwound
[[Page S7012]]
Robinson in a 7-6 second set and thrashed her 6-1 in the
third. They've been best friends ever since. Evert uses the
friendship to boost both players' performance on the court:
While Baker leans how to defend against pure power, Robinson
gets a lesson in wiliness from the freckle-cheeked
Southerner.
``John doesn't really play us together competitively,''
Baker says. ``He knows we are good for each other as
training partners, but he doesn't want us to get too much
of a rivalry going.''
A straight-A student through primary and middle school,
Baker is also managing to keep up with her academic work
through it all. While vacationing at the beach last year.
Retired Daniels Middle School teacher Lynn Reynolds heard
about Baker's decision to go to Florida. She immediately
called up the family and volunteered to come out of
retirement and ``sign up for the team'' as a home
schoolteacher. Reynolds and her young charge have since
become close friends, constantly in touch via e-mail and
fax--the methods they also use to exchange homework
assignments and tests. Daily, the teacher and student log
onto the College Boards web site to work out a daily test
question posted there--just to make sure Baker is ready for
the SAT's when that time comes.
``This high-tech teacher and student relationship has
really been fun for both of us,'' Reynolds say. ``She's a
quick study and a very smart girl. We've become great
friends. This is one of the best teaching assignments of my
whole career.''
In two short years, Baker has traveled from Prague to
Paris, from Palm Springs to Rio. She says she's enamored with
this lifestyle that a simple game has already given her. She
misses her friends, but they'll come visit, they promise.
Everyone says they will.
If the ``tennis thing'' doesn't work out, Baker says,
``with all the agents I've already met, I've got a chance
with my singing''--country, that is, her backburner passion.
Already the world has opened its doors to a talented Raleigh
kid with enough sense to know that dreams are out there for
the getting. ``I mean, if this were to give me a leg up to go
to a school like Stanford or Duke, then it's already worth
it,'' she says. ``Plus, just look at this place,'' she adds,
holding out her hands as if to weigh the fresh, precious
Florida air. ``This is prefect.''
Mr. HELMS. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
Mr. GORTON. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________