Tennis at Manhattan Beach : McNeil Slide Goes From Bad to Worse, 7-6, 6-1

If you can’t hit a baseball even though you’ve brought a garage door to the plate, you’re in a slump.

If the basketball rim looks about the size of a coffee cup from the free-throw line, you’re in a slump.

If each tennis ball you hit decides to make the net its new residence, you’re in a slump.

Lori McNeil is in a slump. Her ranking has plunged from No. 9 to No. 24 and she hasn’t made it past the second round in 11 of her 16 tournaments. She lost again in the first round Monday night and her spirits can’t be located with sonar.

“When I’m out there watching her matches, I just kind of have my fingers crossed,” said Willis Thomas, McNeil’s coach. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Lately, it hasn’t been too difficult to predict. Tami Whitlinger, who turned pro last month, defeated McNeil, 7-6 (9-7), 6-1, in the first round of the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles at Manhattan Country Club.

Last week in San Diego, McNeil lost in the first round to Bettina Bunge, who was playing her first singles match in almost two years.

Whitlinger, a 20-year-old Wisconsin native who would have been a junior at Stanford in the fall, is ranked No. 249. Bunge is not ranked.

Because her first-round losses are now six, how does McNeil feel about all this?

“I think a little confused,” she said.

Every athlete goes through slumps, but McNeil’s has nearly lasted since her first tournament of the year, the Australian Open. There she lost in the first round to a 31-year-old housewife from Fugisawa, Japan, named Yukie Koizumi, who has played only two tournaments all year.

This is not what was expected for McNeil when she burst into prominence with an upset of Chris Evert in the 1987 U.S. Open. McNeil went far with her serve-and-volley game last year when she won two tournaments, reached the final in another and the semifinals in four more.

Then Koizumi came zooming in to start McNeil’s new year poorly. McNeil regrouped and held a match point against Martina Navratilova before losing in the final of the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo.

But since then, she couldn’t win the Peter Pan Pacfic Open. What’s gone wrong? The 25-year-old daughter of former National Football League star Charlie McNeil got knocked out of bounds. She began losing matches and her confidence got misplaced, too.

John Lloyd, who coached McNeil part-time in the past, said the problem with McNeil is in her head, which he fears may be the worst place for it.

“Her mind is fragile,” Lloyd said. “When her game is off, it’s in her head. It’s not technique. It’s all concentration. On a scale of one to 10, she can go from nine to one in one match.”

Lloyd believes McNeil will rebound and get back into the top 10 again if she works hard.

“There’s no reason why she can’t peak in the next two years,” he said.

Thomas, who became McNeil’s coach after Wimbledon, had been Zina Garrison’s coach. He said it’s going to take a year to put McNeil together again.

Her biggest obstacle?

“Herself,” Thomas said. “When you can’t even get the ball on the court when your opponent is off the court, it’s herself. It’s mental.”

McNeil played just enough careless shots to lose the first set, then went down meekly in the second. She missed a break point for 4-2 in the first set, double-faulted for 3-4 and went on to blow four set points.

Whitlinger was down, 15-40 and 4-5, but McNeil lost the next four points on unforced errors. In the tiebreaker, McNeil held two more set points, but the rookie Whitlinger got away from the more experienced player.

McNeil seemed to choke back tears in her interview session after the match. She said she would play smaller tournaments to try to regain her confidence. She looked worried even thinking about it.

And there’s something else. It’s that odd feeling she’s getting these days.

“An inner feeling that I feel when I step on the court that I know every match is going to be very, very tough for me,” she said.

Tennis Notes

Peanut Louie Harper (sore neck) and Andrea Temesvari (sore shoulder) were forced to withdraw. . . . Isabelle Demongeot, who plays top-seeded Martina Navratilova in a second-round match Wednesday night, has decided to change coaches after the U.S. Open and part ways with Regis DeCamaret, who has been working with the 22-year-old French player since she was 10.