Baker makes fairytale comeback

On Wednesday, Court Philippe Chatrier at the French Open featured the usual characters, some of the world’s best and best-known tennis players. It also showcased someone named Brian Baker, whom even Roger Federer said he had first heard of last week. Earlier in the day, top-seeded Victoria Azarenka won easily on Chatrier, Roland Garros’ showcase court. She was followed by Federer, who required a fourth set to move into the third round. The third match, though, could not have been predicted as recently as a week ago, least of all by Baker. On one side of the net stood Gilles Simon, a Frenchman seeded 11th in men’s singles. On the other, stood Baker. This time last year, he went undefeated in the Middle Tennessee Tennis League in Nashville and served as a Belmont University assistant coach. His comeback story seemed drawn from a novel: ranked as high as No. 2 in juniors; a boys’ finalist here in 2003; a six-year absence from the professional tour; five major operations and the scars to prove them. Baker’s career, derailed after a promising start, was revived this month. “Six years, wow,” Federer said. “I didn’t know that.” This magical month ended on Wednesday for Baker, who won seven times in Nice, France, before this tournament and once here, posting an 8-2 record in one 12-day stretch. It ended after the players split the first four sets and after Baker, his shoulder sore, looked as tired as would be expected in the fifth. The final tally read 6-4, 6-1, 6-7 (4), 1-6, 6-0 in Simon’s favour.“I’m not going to say I was fresh as a daisy in the fifth,” Baker said. “I wasn’t.” And yet, while Baker’s tournament ended, his career restart has only begun. For years, he said he wondered what was worse: not being good enough for the tour, or never finding out. Now, when the next rankings come out, he will have moved up to about 126th. There is talk he could receive a wild card into Wimbledon. In Paris, he displayed the kind of game — steady, varied, artful — that impressed an old rival, Novak Djokovic, the No. 1-ranked player. Baker beat Djokovic in juniors, and when Djokovic saw Baker on Tuesday, he said it was for the first time in seven or eight years. “He always had a smart game, a variety of shots,” Djokovic, who defeated Blaz Kavcic, 6-0, 6-4, 6-4, to advance to the third round on Wednesday, said. Friends and family members packed Baker’s cheering section on Wednesday, along for the ride, just as they were for all of the operations. His parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary this week, then celebrated his first victory in a Grand Slam event since 2005. Back at Belmont, the players watched their old coach on television, as Baker-mania swept Nashville like an unlikely country music hit. Rick Byrd, the longtime basketball coach, followed Baker’s story as if addicted. He did not know Baker during the time they shared at Belmont, but he still watched the Simon match while on vacation in Wyoming. “Just got broken,” Byrd wrote in an e-mail during the third set. He followed that sentence with the electronic version of a sad face. Baker’s tale had that kind of impact throughout the tennis world. Justin Gimelstob, who played against Baker before he retired, before all of Baker’s injuries, ranked the comeback among the greatest in their sport. Patrick McEnroe, general manager of development for the US Tennis Association, noted that Baker should inspire other players because he returned despite “no help” and “did it entirely on his own. Along the way, Federer said, he hopes to practise with or play against Baker, to see this story up close. In their own way, both have proved this year that they belong — Baker in professional tennis, Federer with his sport’s elite even near the end of his career. “I’ll be able to look back and say I played on centre court at the French Open,” Baker said. “I hope I don’t remember what happened in the fifth.”