Tennis has allowed the Black family's talented children, Byron, Wayne, and Cara, to see the world and partly escape the instability of their native Zimbabwe. But they haven't abandoned their homeland, or the colonial ways that persist there despite two decades of independence.

It's shortly after dusk on a November day in Mandara, a lightly populated suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe. The flying ants are swarming, and Don Black is jogging, although it looks more like he's race-walking, the splayed toes and callused soles of his bare, 72-year-old feet shuffling silently as he follows the perimeter of a grass court of his own design.

The avocado trees he once tended on his 22 precious acres are now left to their own devices. The surrounding bush, along with the politics and economics of his struggling homeland, is tangled. But on the four pristine courts that Black built one by one, blade by blade, over the last four decades, there is a perfect sense of order and, perhaps more reassuringly, continuity in a country where the laws and the names on the road signs have changed along with the color of the ruling class.

It is tennis that helped Black acquire this plot of land. He made the money to buy it by playing matches with the previous owner and gambling on the outcomes. "We used to bet two dollars the first set, and then if I won, it was four dollars the next, then eight, then 16, then 32, then 64," he says. "He loved betting, this guy, and eventually I made a few thousand, and then I said, ・ow, I want to buy some land,' and he had this piece here, which he gave me very cheaply."

Black calls this compound "my own little Wimbledon." Though Wimbledon, where Black once played, is no place for bare feet, and though it has no bananas dangling from nearby trees and no resident cockatoos or parrots, the two places so dear to Black have more than a surface in common. They also share an epigram from Rudyard Kipling: "If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same. . . . "

At Wimbledon, Kipling's words are posted just above the players' entrance to Centre Court. At the Blacks', Don has affixed them to a weather-beaten sign that hangs on the fence separating the first two courts. "My vision was that I didn't win Wimbledon," he says, "so maybe I could get my kids to do it."

Don Black was born Rhodesian, as were his daughter, Cara, 21, and sons, Byron, 30, and Wayne, 26 -- who, in February, nearly spoiled John McEnroe's debut as U.S. Davis Cup captain in a tension-filled opening-round tie in Harare. They're now Zimbabweans, and if that hasn't changed the agreeable view from
the patio at the Blacks' home in Mandara or the role of the servants, who fetch tennis balls on court for Don and his pupils and punctuate their sentences with the deferential and very colonial baas (or "boss"), it has changed the Blacks' place in the lovely yet listing nation in which their grass courts and 22 acres lie.

That wider Zimbabwean world is symbolized by the presidential residence of former revolutionary Robert Mugabe, which is guarded by edgy, well-armed soldiers; by the country's shrinking white population and decaying infrastructure; and by a piece of property called Heroes Acre, a hillside graveyard in Harare where many of the black resistance fighters who successfully waged guerrilla war against white rule are buried.

Being Rhodesian and being white meant being privileged institutionally -- apartheid held sway here, just as it did until the early 1990s in neighboring South Africa. On the whole, the whites who stayed behind after the old system crumbled in 1980 are still a privileged minority, and racial tension is acute.

But the Black children, who, as low-grade irony would have it, aren't black, have become improbable heroes in a nation where whites comprise less than one percent of the population. Their tennis exploits have transformed them into, arguably, some of Zimbabwe's most visible ambassadors. All three have been ranked in the Top 70 in singles, and all ended 1999 in the Top 30 in doubles. Tennis took Byron and Wayne to John Newcombe's Tennis Ranch in Texas and to All-American careers at USC before they turned professional. It took Cara to six continents and the No. 1 world junior ranking before she turned pro in '98.

Don, who was also his children's coach, intended the sport to be his family's insurance policy against the upheaval and instability of this landlocked nation of 12 million. Byron has never forgotten his father's words: "People can take away everything from you -- your money, your clothes," he says, imitating the voice of his father, "but they can't take away your backhand, so hit the target!"

John McEnroe visiting Zimbabwe during the first round of Davis Cup Courtesy U.S. Tennis Association

Byron had a tennis ball dangling above his crib almost from birth. He was 2 when Don began throwing balls to him. The father sawed off most of the shaft of an old wooden Dunlop MaxPly and filed down the grip until his first child could get both of his tiny hands around it. And by the time Wayne was born, 4-year-old Byron was already smacking double-fisted ground strokes off both wings with precision.

Don and his sons established what they called the "Contract," an unwritten agreement calling for them to be up before dawn every day for practice.

In the cool of the early morning, the three Blacks would sit outside and sip their tea, often without speaking, as the birds chattered away in the bush, and then they'd commence playing
before sunrise. "It became a way of life, like eating breakfast," Byron says. "You don't really ask why you eat breakfast. It was just there."

Because dew often made the grass courts too slick for early-morning hitting sessions, Don built a hard court that's now rimmed by scores of tall, tightly packed banana trees. "The world's only banana court," Don says.

The Blacks have no use for ball machines. This family tennis academy was, and remains, labor-intensive. There was a servant named Foxwell, who learned how to use an overhand cricket bowler's motion to deliver a tennis ball with spin, precision, and, if warranted, a remarkable degree of speed. "Better than a ball machine," Byron says. "It got so he could put it on a dime." Foxwell eventually gave way to a servant known as Madela, or "Old Man," a Malawian of indeterminate age with a long gray beard who still retrieves balls for the Blacks.

When his sons began attending school, Don arranged for them to leave at 1 P.M., skipping the usually mandatory sports sessions so they could return to the courts. The afternoon was devoted to practice matches, usually best-of-five sets (wasn't that what was played in the pros?). There were precious few exceptions: no extended family trips to nearby Victoria Falls; no loopholes in the Contract.

Byron remembers watching television and his father coming in and asking him, rhetorically, "Do you want to be a doer or a watcher all your life?" Don had another mantra, too: "Tennis can take you places you'd never normally go."

This, Don Black knew from experience. He was born in a town called Hartley, about 50 miles outside of Salisbury, which is what Harare was called when the whites were in power. He was raised on a farm on which his father had built a hard-packed dirt tennis court. Tennis soon became Don's passion. He never had formal training, instead picking up tips and advice from Myth of the Big Game, by Ellsworth Vines, a 1930s American champion with  an overpowering forehand.

Don played at Wimbledon a half-dozen times in the 1950s. He reached the third round in singles in '53 and again in '56, when he led future All England champion Ashley Cooper of Australia by two sets to one and 5-2 in the fourth but couldn't close it out. "I had one easy volley and missed it, and that was my chance," he says.

But the loss would hardly sour him on Wimbledon or its surface. A few years later, he built his first grass court. And that was only the beginning. "Every seven years or so I would get the itch to do another one," he says.

Don played in the heart of the amateur era, when players' lives were far more rollicking and collegial than the ones that Byron and Wayne and their opponents lead today. He was close to the legendary Aussies of the era, with whom he had more than his share of escapades.

It was during his travels that Don acquired a lesser bush baby, a small nocturnal mammal similar to a possum. "We had khaki shirts, and these things liked to jump into a dark place, so we used to open our shirts and they jumped down our front," Don says. "I took this thing overseas and got very friendly with Rod Laver because of it. He came and wanted to borrow it."

Why? Because bush babies aren't just  partial to khaki shirts. "This thing was pretty well trained," Don says. "It used to jump down ladies' fronts. Then only I could get it out. Otherwise, it bit."

Laver and other prominent players visited Rhodesia with some frequency in the 1950s and early '60s. Roy Emerson played on Don's grass courts. Once, when a shot went awry, the spry Emerson scaled the fence to retrieve the ball, bending the metal in the process. The damage has never been repaired. "We call it Emmo bend," Don says.

In 1965, the year Don and his wife, Velia, met and married, Rhodesia's president, Ian Smith, declared independence from Great Britain, which had ruled the country since the late 19th century. Britain, which had pressed unsuccessfully for Rhodesia's white minority to chart a course toward majority rule, declared Smith's action illegal and imposed economic sanctions, which were subsequently adopted by the United Nations.

Though the blockade hardly lacked for breaches (South Africa, with its sympathetic white minority in power, was just across the border), getting tennis equipment into Rhodesia was a constant challenge. Don, who gave lessons to the diplomatic corps of visiting nations, asked them to bring balls and racquets with them. Velia, who was raised in South Africa, asked her family to do the same.

"Those years were very lean, although they were the happiest of our lives," she says. "We were all in the same boat here, and you had to really rely on people."

Velia, an accomplished ballet dancer as a young woman, participates in the family business, teaching tennis to diplomats and youngsters at the family courts. She also runs a day-care center for kids of all races. The large playground next to the Black house has long been a bustle of activity, and this November afternoon is no exception, though it's one of those rare days when all three of Velia's children are home from the circuit (Wayne and Cara still live with their parents, while Byron resides in nearby Glen Lorne).

"I miss them all desperately," she says. "It was quite a knock when Cara said, at age 14, that she wanted to leave and go to Newk's ranch like her brothers. I just about fell to pieces."

Cara's parents didn't let her leave "Zim" -- as their homeland is commonly called -- until she finished high school. In fact, she was initially channeled away from tennis. Velia hoped her daughter would follow in her footsteps as a dancer, just as her sons had in Don's. "She was a lovely little dancer," Velia says. "She really had it -- tap, modern, and ballet. But then one day she just said, ・ommy, I don't want to dance anymore. I just want to play tennis.'"

Don was initially reluctant to teach his then 9-year-old daughter. "My dad thought tennis was just for boys," Cara says. "But when Wayne left to go study in the States, he didn't have anybody left to coach. So I begged him to coach me, and he eventually agreed."
Don helped mold Cara into a more complete player than her brothers, whose baseline styles are, oddly enough, not ideally suited to the grass on which they grew up. "He pushed me
to have an all-court game," she says, "because he thought that in women's tournaments, it was really rare that someone came into the net."

In 1997, Cara won the junior titles at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. As a pro, she has been ranked as high as No. 31, although her 5-foot-5§, 122-pound frame isn't built for the new women's power game.

Some of Cara's less-worldly acquaintances on tour have been known to ask her whether she has lions in her backyard. While the answer is a resounding "No," there's certainly no shortage of animal life at the Blacks'. There are four dogs, three cats, and a parakeet that rides on the children's shoulders, coos when its neck is rubbed, and picks food from Wayne's teeth on command. There are also guinea fowl, cockatoos, parrots, jackals, and who knows what else hiding in the bush beyond the house and courts.

There was once a large cage that contained tortoises, birds, and a small antelope called a duiker. Byron remembers crawling inside and communing with them. And while some of childhood's other dreamy pleasures no doubt got lost between the myriad forehands down the line and serves up the T, you'll hear no mourning from the Black children.

"Until I was 16, I'd question practicing all the time while everyone else was having fun or going to parties," Wayne says. "But from then on, I knew I didn't want to do anything else. There was no way I was going to do an office job."

"When you're from Zim, it's such a small place, you have to do something extraordinary to make it," adds Byron. "That's the way it is in all our sports, and if my dad pressured us, it was because he understood that. I can tell you, if Dad hadn't pushed us, we wouldn't have gotten as far as we've got."

It is late morning at another house that tennis built. Byron is standing in his backyard in Glen Lorne, reveling in the view and, above all, the space.

Byron grew up with space, and though the circuit on which he earns a handsome living often lacks for it, he has elbow and breathing room to spare for the roughly three months a year he spends at home, which is a short drive from his parents' place.

Byron points out the rock where he proposed to his wife, Fiona, in 1995, shortly after reaching the U.S. Open quarterfinals, his best Grand Slam result. Behind him is his new house. Large and spacious, with a massive thatched roof, it looks more like a safari lodge than a suburban showplace. The house has been named Pamushana, which means "shining in the sun" in Shona, the local language of the black population.

In a sport populated by self-made nomads who often pick residences for convenience or for tax breaks, it's refreshing to find a player who has remained so close to his roots. Though Byron also owns a beach house in Capetown, South Africa, and an apartment in London, his foundation is here on this hill.

But it soon becomes clear that the foundation isn't quite as solid as Byron, a worrier by nature, would like. "I feel like it's a dream in life, and I'm going to wake up and lose it somehow," he says.

There are the natural threats, evidenced by the huge lightning rods on either end of the house and the blackened patch of ground nearby, the residue of a fire that crept onto this rise when Byron and Fiona were away.

More unsettling, however, are the man-made threats. Social unrest has intensified as the country's economic situation has worsened, and there's increasing concern about personal safety. An electrified fence surrounds Byron's property, and a security fence rims the fashonable 200-acre community in which he lives. Private guards stand watch in the driveways at night and another mans the main entrance, raising and lowering the steel security boom for residents -- all underscoring the disparity between Zimbabwe's privileged few and the impoverished majority beyond the gates.

Drive a few minutes along any road from Byron's home and you'll see blacks in tattered clothes squatting in the dirt, or hawking fruit and soapstone carvings, or piling into "emergency taxis," the minivans that serve as transport for the masses.

"I can feel this country struggling, and I want so much to help," says Byron, who contributes financially to a number of tennis programs and gives numerous free clinics to underprivileged youngsters. "But I'm just one man, one white man with a family, and at the end of the day, what can I really do?"

Byron knows the situation could worsen. "Hopefully we aren't going to have the type of [crime] problems South Africa is having, but maybe it's going to come up here, too," he says. "More and more people are unemployed, and maybe they're going to start stealing things and be more violent. But we're lucky. We don't have as many weapons just roaming around like South Africa does. They've got weapons all over the place."

Despite Byron's gestures to help his less-fortunate countrymen, his opulent lifestyle, in contrast to general conditions in Zimbabwe, harks back to his country's past in a way that some would find disturbing. Inside Byron's front door there are many more rooms than occupants; soaring ceilings and polished fixtures; a new pool table and Wurlitzer jukebox imported from the U.S.; satellite television and a swimming pool built low to the ground so as not to obscure the view. There's also a caretaker named Silas and a full-time maid named Mary, who arrives silently beside one's bed in the early morning with a pot of tea.

Like many whites in this country, Byron grew up with black servants. So did Fiona, a vivacious Zimbabwean who got her college degree in Capetown. Byron met Fiona when he was 16. "It's a very small sort of white community here," he says. "Out of 80,000 [white] people, it's not hard to pretty much know everyone. You've either got a relative who knows them or a friend who knows them."

It was more than a decade later, in December 1996, that the two were married. Among those who flew to Harare for the wedding were Jonathan Stark, an American who was Byron's principal partner when he was ranked No. 1 in the world in doubles in 1994, and another of his partners, Grant Connell of Canada.

A visit to Byron and Fiona's home serves  as a reminder of how much prize money in men's tennis has grown in the last decade. Byron's highest career singles ranking is 22, and he has only two pro titles to his name. But his doubles prowess and intermittent singles success have earned him more than $4 million in prize money as a professional. And those dollars go a great deal further in Zimbabwe, with its cheap labor and weak currency, than they would in the U.S. or western Europe. "Where else in the world could I have set myself up like this?" Byron asks, as if certain of the answer.

Fiona likes to tease Byron by calling him "Melvin," after the obsessive character played by Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. "Byron's something of a control freak," Fiona says, chidingly, in front of him.

But in contemporary Zimbabwe, there's no shortage of items that are beyond Byron's control. There are the frequent power outages that paralyze the modern conveniences in his dream home. And around the barbecue pits and the swimming pools of the wealthy, there's increasingly pessimistic banter about the future of the country.

Two decades after independence, Zimbabwe has rampant inflation, galloping privation, and one of the world's highest AIDS rates. In the last two years, economic woes have propelled protesters into the streets and compelled workers to go on strike against the government that many of them fought to empower.

In March, the government put forward a constitutional amendment that, if supported by two-thirds of the 150-member Parliament, would grant it the power to seize land from white farmers (who control more than half of the country's most fertile land) without compensation and distribute it among landless blacks. Though the Blacks are unlikely to be affected if it passes, white families they know could be displaced.

"When we go out these days, that's all we end up talking about -- the politics," Byron says. "It's a very negative feeling right now. I mean, my parents, they're too old to go. They'll only leave if some people start getting killed around here. My dad's not going to move. You're not going to imagine him moving from this place to a little flat in London."

One can't imagine Byron doing so, either. "I'd miss this," he says. "I mean, there's nothing like Africa. It's got a special vibe. The animals are different here. It's funny. When you walk in the bush here, you really do feel scared. You're always on the edge. It's exciting because something could come out of there and kill you. In Australia, you can walk in the bloody middle of the country and there's nothing that's going to hurt you."

In a country with a temperate climate, one would expect Davis Cup matches to be held outdoors. But that would require temporary bleachers and money that Tennis Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwean government don't have. And so home ties are played under cover at the City Sports Centre, elevation 5,000 feet, located a short drive along a very bumpy road from the hodgepodge of high rises, hotels, and less stable structures in central Harare. The dank, concrete arena with narrow wooden bleachers that accommodate 4,000 spectators is at least a decade overdue for renovation -- and could still be unrenovated a decade from now.

Playing indoors here doesn't necessarily protect you from the elements: Against the Australians in the first round of the 1999 Davis Cup, rain dripping through the roof delayed the Blacks' doubles match against Mark Woodforde and Todd Woodbridge. Last September, during a relegation match against Chile, the local electric company cut power to the part of the city that included the arena. The lights went out in the middle of Wayne's singles match against Marcelo Rios and, despite frantic negotiating, didn't come on again for more than an hour, by which time most of the fans had headed home.

"That's Africa for you, man," Byron says.

The Black brothers aren't the only members of Zimbabwe's Davis Cup team -- Kevin Ullyett, who grew up in South Africa but moved to Harare in 1998, teamed with Wayne for a doubles victory over the U.S. in February -- but they're the only ones who've played singles in recent years. Luckily, there are two of them: Zimbabwe doesn't compete in Fed Cup because Cara is the nation's only elite women's player.

In a country whose populace has limited access to television and rarely reads newspapers, Davis Cup is the only major tennis event that strikes a chord, mainly because it's the only one ever played here, the only one associated with the flag.

"When I look back on my tennis some day, my best memories will be from Davis Cup," Byron says. "It's the most powerful thing I've been involved with in the sport."

Wayne, who sports a Zimbabwean star tattoo on his left shoulder blade, would agree. So would Paul Chingoka, the avuncular president of Tennis Zimbabwe, whose tenure has coincided with Zimbabwe's improbable rise to the Davis Cup World Group. Each round in the World Group brings in $130,000, and Davis Cup revenue now underwrites nearly all of the national tennis budget. "The Blacks' impact on tennis here is difficult to overestimate," Chingoka says.

There are other Zimbabwean athletes who've succeeded abroad. Nick Price has won two of golf's major championships, and soccer goalie Bruce Grobbelaar was a longtime star in England's top division. But none has represented the country as successfully as the Blacks in recent years.

In 1997, Wayne's victory in the decisive rubber against Austria's Gerald Mandl propelled Zimbabwe to the Davis Cup World Group for the first time. That set the stage for the following spring, when the Blacks traveled to Mildura, Australia, for a first-round tie on grass against the heavily favored Australians. The Aussies entered the final day with a 2-1 lead, but they were without their big guns; Patrick Rafter was sidelined with a virus and Mark Philippoussis had declined to play. The Black brothers took full advantage of the situation.
Wayne defeated Mark Woodforde to level the tie, and Byron then beat Jason Stoltenberg to clinch one of the greatest upsets in Davis Cup history.

The matches weren't televised live back home -- the national Zimbabwe network, short on means and foresight, would broadcast them in the coming weeks -- but word of the victory spread quickly. When Wayne arrived at the Harare airport (Byron, rather than returning home, went straight to a tournament in Hong Kong), several hundred people greeted him, including Cara, her face painted yellow, green, red, and black to match the colors of the Zimbabwean flag. Tribal dancers sang "Yave Nyama Yekugocha," a traditional Shona hunting song that literally means, "The meat is ready for roasting."

When Wayne finally stepped onto the tarmac, a group of supporters lifted him up and carried him through customs and immigration. As he drove home in a pickup truck, countrymen cheered along the roadside. And the next morning, he attended a reception at the residence of President Mugabe, an event whose symbolism wasn't lost on Chingoka.

"This was our president, the black freedom fighter, honoring the accomplishments of two white tennis players," he says. "This is not a scene you would have seen before."

Mugabe was also in the City Sports Centre stands for the rematch against Australia in April 1999 (which Zimbabwe lost 4-1), and for last February's narrow 3-2 loss to the McEnroe/Andre Agassi?led U.S. squad.

The Black brothers may be teammates, siblings, and sometime partners, but they're also, on a certain level, rivals.

Byron, 4 years older, is the more articulate and socially conscious. He's the one who first attracted much-needed financial aid and coaching assistance from the International Tennis Federation; who first left home to study and train in the U.S.; who first went to USC; and who, upon graduating, first made an impact on the pro tour. By the time Wayne left USC a year early to turn professional, Byron was already ranked in the Top 100.

"In the beginning it was tough because he was doing so well and I was doing nothing," Wayne says. "But I got over that. All in all, it's been easier to have him out there."
Wayne escaped Byron's shadow in 1999, winning three doubles titles with Sandon Stolle and reaching the fourth round of the Australian Open in singles. But the brothers remain very different people in different phases of their lives.

Byron is a wildlife lover who dreams of owning his own game ranch. He knows his eland from his kudu and has a particular fondness for tortoises. Wayne, a bachelor, is more interested in "girls and stuff."

During the off-season, Byron minds his house and financial interests and reacquaints himself with Fiona, while Wayne heads off to a rented houseboat on Lake Kariba with friends for several days of what he happily terms "drunken fishing."

"Me and him are so different in that respect," Wayne says. "But that's the only way I can make myself fresh to go out there again. So I kind of go extreme in some ways."

What the brothers do share, aside from tennis, are nationalism, nervous energy, and "Moose," which is the only name either of them calls their trainer and coach, Brett Stephens. Stephens, a strapping former Australian Rules football star, was introduced to the pro tennis circle by fitness guru Gavin Hopper, and his work with the Blacks so im- pressed Pete Sampras that Sampras hired him last year on a part-time basis.

"Everybody calls him a physical trainer," says Wayne, "but he's really more of a psychologist."

Perhaps that's for the best, because in the Blacks, Moose doesn't have great physical specimens to work with: Both are small by today's ATP standards (Byron is 5-foot-10 and Wayne all of  5-7). Yet both compensate with quickness, excellent service returns, solid ground strokes, and, perhaps most important, doggedness. "Two ugly guys from Zimbabwe with big tickers," Moose has called them.

The Blacks are far from ugly, but there is a hardness to their features and their compact frames that's consonant with their inner competitiveness. It has been an essential ingredient in their overcoming the nagging sense of inferiority that comes with being citizens of an underdeveloped African nation.

"When I got to the U.S. Open the first time, I couldn't hit a ball. I lost 6-2, 6-2, 6-4 to somebody in minutes," Wayne says. "Just no belief whatsoever, like ・'m just a little Zimbabwean out here just for fun.'"

And that feeling has never entirely gone away, for either brother.

"I often think, ・m I any less of a human being just because I am traveling on a Zimbabwean passport?" Byron says. "You're treated as second class."

The Blacks are an incongruity. Though descendants of a sociopolitical system the black underclass rejected by force, they are extremely popular and project precisely the sort of energetic, exportable, overachieving image the nation as a whole seems incapable of duplicating.

The brothers don't appear to feel this contrast deeply. For all its flaws, Zimbabwe is what they know best, and even if Byron attended an all-white grade school and socializes at home primarily with whites, he has seen enough and sensed enough about race relations in the U.S. to realize that some would be critical of his and his family's lifestyle. Even he is unsettled by it. The book he recommends to visitors is Mukiwa, a memoir by journalist Peter Godwin that covers the years when white-ruled Rhodesia was fading away. It's a finely drawn self-portrait of a young person's emerging grasp of the inequities and imperfections of the society into which he was born. Unlike Godwin, though, Byron never fought for and then rejected white Rhodesia. The choice was made for him.

Byron is well aware that his most effective medium for connecting to his countrymen has been through tennis, particularly when playing Davis Cup for his nation in the City Sports Centre.

"Most of all, I remember our tennis transcending the barriers," Byron says as he walks and talks his way around the dusty, empty arena. "There have been times in here where it didn't matter that we were different colors. There was no race; we were just all together and singing together. We were one."

It's early evening in Mandara, and Byron has just returned from giving a clinic to top young tennis prospects in the town of Chitungwiza. All of them are poor and black, and the best, Clive, is being supported financially by the Black family.

Clive wielded a contemporary graphite racquet and wore relatively new sneakers. But his peers used beaten-up wood and metal frames and dashed around the four concrete courts wearing rubber sandals, leather moccasins, or no shoes at all, trying to catch Byron's eye.

After the clinic, it's Byron's time to play -- in the nightly soccer game the brothers organize with friends on a grass field fashioned by Don Black. Tonight, like every night, Don has grabbed a lawn chair and come to watch the proceedings, which are more sweaty than skillful. Nonetheless, Don, a broad-brimmed hat keeping the last light off his bearded face, seems transfixed, as absorbed by the unpredictable bursts characteristic of soccer as by the more rhythmic sport to which he has dedicated his life and his land.

What's intriguing about Don is that for all the pre-programming of his children, he's not a stock stage father.

If Wimbledon was the shining goal, wouldn't he book his ticket for London every summer to watch his brood in action? Yet Don has never allowed himself the payoff of watching in person as Byron, Wayne, or Cara play in the main draw of a Grand Slam event.

"The thing is, they've got their own friends, their wives and girlfriends, and coaches, and they don't want an old fuddy-duddy like me standing around," he says. "As much as I'd love to be there, I enjoy being here so much."

The Contract has expired, but Don's way of life hasn't. With the soccer game over, he race-walks again at dusk, his gnarled feet silently tracing the perimeter of the perfect rectangle of green.

To a fan casually scanning the rankings over morning coffee, it might seem extraordinary that three children from the same family in remote Zimbabwe all grew up to be successful tennis pros. But to Don, there's nothing particularly remarkable about it. He was the one who sawed off the grips and saw the future, and even if none of his offspring ever wins the biggest prize at the All England Club, he's convinced it was wothr the effort.

So are his children. And from time to time, they even let hem know, just as Wayne did shortly after the stunning victory over Australia in Mildura, when a TV crew stuck a camera in front of his broad, freckled face and gave him the floor. Tears welling in his eyes, Wayne chose to send a message back home: "Thanks, Dad," he said. "for building those grass courts."

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