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This week, the courts at Laguna Niguel Racquet Club have been taken over by Futures players--among the bottom feeders of professional tennis.
There are the 30-year-old lifers who have spent the last decade scrounging the globe for ATP computer points, the 20-year-olds who either weren't thrilled with the level of play in college and the hot-shot teenagers getting their first taste of the nomadic lifestyle and the cutthroat competition.
And then, there is Geoff Abrams, the premed major from Stanford with the booming serve, the soft hands and the 3.3 grade point average.
At 6-foot-5, Abrams not only stands out physically, but intellectually.
Abrams is torn between following his dream of becoming a top- flight pro tennis player or pursuing a more noble calling. He's giving himself 18 months to advance to the second-highest level of pro tennis, or else it's back to the books.
"My breakthrough needs to be now," he said. "If I can't do anything in the next year, that kind of tells me this is not what I should be doing. I love tennis, but I think some of these guys stay out here because they don't have anything else to do."
If Abrams succeeds, he might be the first premed graduate to make it to the pros, said former top-10 pro Eliot Teltscher, who occasionally tutors Abrams. But as he watched Abrams lose a tiebreaker to 311th-ranked Justin Bower of South Africa this week, Teltscher wondered whether Abrams is aggressive enough to rise to the top of the pro tennis game.
"He's a little too conservative sometimes," said Teltscher, a USTA regional coach for Southern California. "He's a big kid, so he's got to be an imposing player. He's got to come out there and say, 'I'm going to hit aces.' "
Looking for an edge
Abrams, a former standout at Newport Harbor High, could have used an ace on set point of his first-set tiebreaker against Bower. But he couldn't deliver and wound up losing the set and the match, 7-6 (8-6), 7-5.
"I'm serving 6-4 and I throw in a weak slice forehand to give the guy the point," said Abrams, who went on to lose Wednesday in the first round of doubles with former Stanford teammate...