Rick Leach loved the sport of tennis.
He couldn't get away from it, even at age 6. That was when his father, Dick, said Rick had his first sports injury. He had been playing so much tennis that he had injured his left elbow from overuse.
The orthopedist said Rick would never play tennis again, and a sparkling career was nearly derailed before it really ever began.
Game, set and match. But not so fast.
The improvisation necessary in a sport like tennis took over. The young lefty switched to playing right-handed until the injury could heal.
"His left elbow somehow healed," Dick Leach said. "Then they said he could play once a week, which of course turned into two or three times a week. And he hasn't missed a match since due to injury."
Pretty impressive, considering that "since" for Rick Leach encapsulates 46 career Assn. of Tennis Professionals (ATP) doubles titles, nine of those Grand Slams (five in men's doubles and four in mixed doubles).
Leach, 42, also won an ATP doubles title for 16 straight years and reached the No. 1 world ranking in 1990. And he has also played World Team Tennis for years; he's in his second year for the Newport Beach Breakers.
The résumé speaks for itself. That's good because Leach, who lives in Laguna Beach, isn't big on chest-thumping.
He still lives in the same town where he leaped onto the high school scene, leading Laguna Beach High to a pair of CIF Southern Section Division 3-A boys' tennis titles in 1980 and '82. And there, it's somehow easy for Leach to blend into the background noise of the crashing waves, the rock piles and the beachfront shops.
Not that Breakers Coach Trevor Kronemann, himself an accomplished doubles player, knows why.
"It's really a story untold," Kronemann said. "I know that's how Ricky wants it, but he can walk around Laguna Beach and go unnoticed with nine Grand Slam doubles titles. We don't cover the game enough, like golf does. We've got 10, 15 stars that drive the game.
"If not the best, he's one of the best doubles players to play the game. These are the guys whose stories need to be told."
Rick Leach has plenty of stories. In his senior year playing for Laguna Beach High, then known as the "Artists," the United States Tennis Assn. invited him to play in the French Open junior tournament.
