By Josh Gajewski
LOS ANGELES – It was a moment they probably dreamed about, even if the dream differed from the moment that finally was: Rajeev Ram and Brian Baker, friends and frequent
foes since childhood, stepping onto a tennis court to play each other as pros.
Long ago, the dream may have been fancier: a bigger event, a larger crowd, perhaps a trophy on the line.
But on Monday night, the moment would suffice: a first-round match at the Farmers Classic, played in front of a sparse crowd. In the end, it was Ram – not Baker, tennis’ Cinderella story of the summer – walking away with a 7-6 (7-3), 7-5 victory that, fittingly, could have just as easily gone the other way — just like their last match, a tight three-setter at a Challenger event back in 2004. Or even their first match, nearly two decades ago, when a 12-year-old Ram met an 11-year-old Baker in Nashville.
It was, as they say, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
“You know, we go back a long way,” Ram, now 28, said Monday . “A long, long way.
“At that age, it doesn’t take a whole lot to become good friends, does it? We both played tennis, both saw each other at all the tournaments, and that was that.”
They hit, they won, they dreamed. And back then, they certainly had license to dream very big. As they matured through their teens, Baker arguably grew into the bigger prospect, becoming the second-ranked junior in the world in 2003, reaching the quarterfinals of Wimbledon’s junior tournament as well as the junior finals of the French. “Actually, he was one of the best – if not the best – juniors in the world,” Novak Djokovic, whom Baker defeated back then, told ESPN earlier this summer. “He always had a very smart game, a variety of shots.”
Ram, meanwhile, was no slouch. He won nine junior titles in both singles and doubles, and was the high school singles state champion of Indiana.
Together, Ram and Baker teamed up as a doubles tandem whenever they could. In 2002, they reached the finals of the Wimbledon juniors. By 2004, after a great run on the Challenger circuit, the pair not only gained entry into the main doubles draw of the US Open but managed to win their first-round match. A year later, Baker made an even bigger splash by stunning ninth-seeded Gaston Gaudio in the first round of the main singles draw.
It was all happening just as they’d hoped. And then suddenly – and painfully – it wasn’t.…
Left hip, right hip, wrist, elbow and abdomen. Six years, five surgeries, no matches. Such became the story of Brian Baker.
And as Baker faded from tennis, so, too, did his friendship.
“Yes and no,” Ram said when IT asked if they’d remained in touch. “It was hard. I didn’t really know what to say to the guy. I’m playing, and he’s doing his thing.
“Yeah, for sure I wished him well or whatever, but … I just didn’t know what to say sometimes?”
During his litany of injuries, Baker went back to school, both as a student and an assistant tennis coach at Belmont University in his hometown of Nashville. Ram, a native the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel, continued to travel the world as a pro, though he never quite turned into a singles superstar but instead more of a doubles specialist. He reached a career-high doubles ranking of No. 33 in 2010.
And then?
Well, then this story turned into a Hollywood script.
Last December, Ram’s phone rang. It was Baker. He wanted to play.
“He’s like, ‘I want to see how it feels,’” Ram remembered. Baker had been hitting again, and winning. In the preceding months, his body finally feeling good again, Baker had entered three small events — two Futures, one Challenger – and done well.
His next challenge was to hit against a pro for consecutive days and see if his repaired body – including a right arm that had undergone “Tommy John” surgery – would respond. And so he called.
“I said, ‘Yeah, come on up,’” Ram said. Baker packed his gear and drove up to Ram’s Indiana home. Ram booked Court 12 of the Carmel Racquet Club. And for the first time in too long, they hit. They hit for four days.
And five months later, it was Ram at home, watching Baker on TV rather then the other way around. Baker was in Nice, France, and tennis’ Cinderella story of the summer had officially begun. The long-forgotten boy wonder, now 27, had made it all the way from the qualifying rounds to the final of an ATP event, his body and mind thriving in wins over Gael Monfils and Nikolay Davydenko – and on the physical rigors of clay, no less.
“Never thought I’d sit and watch you play at this level again,” Ram, watching, tweeted out to his pal. “Remarkable effort and story .. no words.”
A mutual friend tweeted back: “didn’t it all start last December on ct 12 of CRC?”
“Hahahaha it sure did,” Ram replied.
After finally losing to in the Nice final, Baker’s remarkable run only continued: he beat Xavier Malisse in the first round of the French Open before dazzling even in defeat, pushing local favorite Gilles Simon to five sets on Court Philippe Chatrier.
Then at Wimbledon, Baker won three qualifying matches to get into the main draw, and then didn’t lose until a fourth-round loss to Philipp Kohlschreiber. A “fairytale,” one British tabloid said of Baker’s run.
Though Baker’s return to home soil hasn’t been quite so kind – he lost in the first round in Atlanta before Monday’s loss in Los Angeles – he is now No. 79 in the world.
“I took some time off after Wimbledon, let the body recover, and I just haven’t really gotten my hard court game underneath me,” Baker said. He noted that managing his body remains a learning process. And, he added, he’s still “getting used to playing on the bigger courts, and getting used to the vantage points where the toss kind of goes up into the crowd.”
As for the epic summer so far, the low-key Baker said he honestly doesn’t feel as if his life has really changed. “I’m able to play better events and stay in nicer hotels and play in nicer venues,” he said. “But honestly, I’m not the kind of guy that gets too up or too down.
“Or maybe I get down but I don’t ever get too up. I kind of take it with stride and that’s probably one thing I need to work on is enjoying it a little bit more when you have success because out here you’re going to have weeks like this where it’s just not good … So you might as well enjoy the good weeks.”
Ram, for one, certainly has. “You know, no one has been happier for this whole thing than me,” he said of Baker’s comeback. “I watched every match he played in Nice and was just rooting for him the whole way.”
Monday night’s match, Ram said, was actually somewhat difficult for him to wrap his mind around. “It’s hard to play your best and compete when, you know, he’s on the other side. (And) I know his game so well, he knows my game so well. So you have these second thoughts – ‘Well, should I serve it here because he knows I like to go there?’ And vice versa. You outthink yourself.”
And as for that Hollywood script, well, here comes a potential third act: when asked if he might ever team up with his old doubles partner again, Ram broke the news: “We’re playing the US Open together, as long as he’s healthy,” Ram said. “That’s (the plan). We talked about it, I said, ‘Look, you want to play?’ And he said, ‘I’d like to play, too. Let me just play the summer and see how I feel.’”
“It’s going to be great,” Ram added. “He’s a buddy of mine, he plays well, and I’d rather have that return on my side of the net rather than the other side of the net.”
A wondrous return, indeed.
