Ready to rumble

It was 7:07 a.m. Kailua Kona, Hawaii, time last Sunday and Spokane professional tennis player Jan-Michael Gambill was in bed sleeping.

What happened next even surprised this one-time People Magazine “50 Most Beautiful People in the World” and Sports Illustrated for Women “The 10 Hottest Men in Sports.” winner.

The Earth moved.

It rocked to the magnitude of 6.8 on the Richter scale, as plate-glass windows chattered like wind-up toys, furniture shimmied more than Mario Lopez’s partner on “Dancing with the Stars” and noise polluted the tropical air like a Boeing 797 taking off – inside Gambill’s living room.

“Everything was moving in every direction,” said Gambill, whose house is about 6 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter. “It was hard to run, hard to move. This was something else.”

Gambill was spared significant damage. A decorative dish hanging outside crumbled into tiny pieces, but nothing else broke and the tiles on his kitchen floor didn’t crack.

He said he had enough time to run around his house, which he estimated was about 30 seconds, and move some of his valuables to the ground before dashing outside.

“You look at the windows of the house and they are moving so far you can’t believe they’re not breaking.” Gambill said by telephone last week. “I’m thinking, the windows are going to break and this is going to be a true nightmare. But it’s a fairly new house and I was one of the fortunate ones.”

Gambill, whose most noted career achievements were advancing to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon in 2000 and reaching 14th in the rankings in 2001, is building a new life on the Big Island. He sold his custom-built log cabin house in Colbert and moved into his ocean-view house in the spring, fulfilling a longtime dream of living in paradise.

Gambill is teaching young proteges at the Mauna Loa Village & Holua Resort. He and his father/coach, Chuck Gambill, also are preparing to open Gambill’s Big Island Tennis Academy at the resort. The focus will be on college-level players and those with professional-level potential.

Gambill, however, is not giving up on the life that rewarded him $3.6 million in prize money over a career that began more 10 years ago.

At 29, Gambill said he is working toward returning to the ATP tour, with January’s Australian Open prequalifiers serving as his target. He’d like to play professionally for three or four more years.

His future hinges on his right shoulder, which he injured at the end of the 2005 season and still prevents him from playing strenuous tennis. This, coming on the heels of trying to play through a shin splint injury that went on for months as he dropped out of the top 100.

He played in three tournaments this year, losing in the third round in one and retiring during the matches in the other two. He also played World Team Tennis for the Houston Wranglers in July, but with rules such as the first player to five games wins the set, the rigors are hardly the same as best-of-5 tour events.

But Gambill said after the latest diagnosis, he’s encouraged that the injury won’t end his career.

He was examined by Dr. George C. Branche of the Anderson Orthopedic Clinic in Arlington, Va. Branche is a lifelong tennis player who specializes in sports medicine. Gambill was told his scapula (shoulder blade) was turned too much, not the greatest news for a player whose strength is his big serve that can reach speeds exceeding 140 mph.

He also was told it’s “very repairable,” with the right therapy and hard work, something that has never bothered Gambill.

“The injury is from playing, playing and playing and also working in the gym and not enough work on the back or stretching on certain things,” Gambill said. “It’s very painful … pulling on all the different tendons and ligaments and muscles. After a while I can’t continue to serve.”

Gambill is working with a physical therapist two times a week and once a day on his own. Many weeks he registers for end-of-the-year tournaments, but finds himself pulling out because of his shoulder.

He knows a comeback may be as challenging as breaking onto the international level the first time, when he was straight out of Mead High School with his dad guiding him. He has a protected world ranking of 195, which also will get him into eight ATP events. They likely will be qualifiers or challenger events. He also may receive wild cards into some main events, such as the sites of his three ATP wins.

Gambill said he’s mentally prepared to return to the minor leagues of the tennis circuit.

“I would have never thought I would have to go to some places that I just don’t want to go to again,” he said. “That’s just the way it is. That’s what you have to do. But I never had a big huge ego, like I deserve to be there. You only deserve to be there if you are there.”

He’s still preparing physically.

“It’s hard to go to a tournament and be at 80 percent,” he said. “When you serve 140 and slow it down to 90 miles an hour, that ain’t going to work out.”

He won’t play unless his bum wing is 100 percent.

“I don’t want to go to a tournament just to hope to get a couple of matches in and feel good about myself,” he said. “I’d feel terrible about myself, especially if I re-injured it.

“I want to go there to say, ‘I’m coming to win this tournament.’ Just the way I’ve always gone to tournaments.”