"Oh no."

The words were Jocelyn Rafter's, uttered with some frequency as her seventh and most independent child rushed the net against all odds and logic at age 10.

"I remember saying, 'What are you doing in there, Patrick?' " Jocelyn says now. "The other kids were just delighted. They'd pass him or lob him because he was so little. You knew he could do better from the baseline. But Patrick always said, 'I just love it, Mum. I just love it there.' Patrick always had a mind of his own."

Fifteen years later, Jocelyn Rafter is no longer wincing protectively in the stands. Net-rushing worked out rather well for her single-minded son in 1997. It won him the U.S. Open and

propelled him into six other finals. It won him nearly $3 million in prize money, although that genuinely seems to matter less to Patrick than to some of his nouveau riche opponents. It won him hearts, and, no, ladies, we're definitely not referring just to the hearts of Waltzing Matilda-humming Australian jingoists who can now cease getting weepy over black- and-white footage of Sedgman, Hoad, Rosewall, Laver, etc.

Rafter's swashbuckling, occasionally breathtaking tennis also has won him the 1997 TENNIS magazine Most Improved Male Pro award, although he had some competition from two other frequent net-rushers: Greg Rusedski, the Anglo-Canadian he beat to win the Open, and Jonas Bjorkman, the Monaco-Swede who lost to Rusedski in the Open semis and led his nation, not his tax haven, to the Davis Cup final.

But Rafter, coiffure and confidence evolving at a rapid clip, had the best year in the big events of anyone who was not named Sampras (or Hingis), and what made it all the more poignant and gratifying was that hardly anyone expected it, certainly not Rafter. Or at least that is the impression he convincingly and engagingly conveyed.

This was Rafter after he beat Galo Blanco in the quarterfinals of the French Open: "I'm more amazed than anything. Me in the semifinals of a Grand Slam, especially on clay. Who ever would have believed that?"

This was Rafter the morning after he won at Flushing Meadows (also the morning after a celebratory cake-fight at a Manhattan watering hole with giddy friends and relations): "I always dreamed about it, but I never thought I'd win a Slam. And when I actually think about it more and more, it's like, this is crazy. I've won Manchester and the U.S. Open. It's like the Jensens or something. I've won two tournaments in my life and one of them is the Open. That stuff just does not happen."

When the year began in Australia, "Meet Me After" Rafter-as his female fans have dubbed him-was in danger of becoming a handsome afterthought. He was ranked 62nd in the world after having been as high as 20 in 1994, and the sponsors and the autograph and interview seekers were now busy circling Rafter's robust and similarly telegenic sidekick, Mark Philippoussis.

But there were a handful of true believers, among them John New-combe, Australia's Davis Cup captain, and Tony Roche, its Davis Cup coach. The two hall-of-famers, former doubles partners and fast friends had been running the team and influencing Rafter since 1994, and in a year in which he decided to tackle the tour without the modern player's security blanket (a full-time coach), they would play particularly significant roles. "Those guys have so much to offer and so much to tell you," Rafter says. "I owe them pretty much my whole year."

"Tony and I always have had a great belief in Pat," Newcombe says. "But he didn't have this total commitment and belief in what his destiny was. Tony and I felt that even though Pat was only 60 in the world, he would be headed for a great year if he could get his real belief going."

Rafter would end up ranked in the top three, but it would take a kick-start from Newcombe to set the process in motion. It came in early February in Newcombe's native Sydney on the grass-covered, tradition-drenched center court at White City. Australia was hosting France in the first round of the Davis Cup, and Rafter was playing Cedric Pioline in the opening rubber and trailing two sets to love after blowing a 5-1 lead in the second set.

As he sat down dejectedly next to Newcombe, Rafter told his captain, "Sorry, that's the biggest choke I've ever seen."

Newcombe had seen and heard enough.

"He just had his head down and his tail between his legs," Newcombe says. "So I figured it was time for us to get down in the gutter with a little bit of gutter talk. So we had a one-way heart-to-heart with a few very choice adjectives. The bottom line was that, 'This is a war of attrition, and it's going to be one point at a time and if it's going to take three more hours, that's how long we're going to be out here.' But I told him, 'The only way you're going to be able to do it is if you dig down inside your guts and find something you didn't know was there.' "

Rafter might not have known what "attrition" meant, but he knew what Newcombe meant, and after struggling to hold serve at 3-2 in the third set, he gradually wrapped his soft hands around the match and rallied to win in four hours and 15 minutes, erasing a two-set deficit for the first time in his career. What is striking in retrospect is that Rafter was immediately aware of the match's potential significance: "Hopefully, this will be the start of big things for me this year," he said.

One month later, he reached the final indoors in Philadelphia, his first final since 1994, and lost to Sampras in three close sets. After a mediocre early hard-court season, it was not until he got another dose of Davis Cup bonhomie-Australia's 5-0 romp over the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals in April-and switched back to a more abbreviated service motion at the urging of his father that Rafter truly began to take flight. In subsequent weeks, he reached the final in Hong Kong, the semifinals in Tokyo and, more telling, the final at St. Pölten, Austria, on clay the week before the French Open.

On court, after his loss to Marcelo Filippini, someone asked him if he was going to win the French. He answered, "No. I haven't got a chance."

Two weeks later, as he took advantage of the dry, fast conditions in Paris to reach his first Grand Slam semifinal on his least favorite surface, he was revising his thinking. "I was thinking to myself that the next time somebody asks me a question like that before a Slam, I won't say, 'No.' I'll say, 'I don't know' or something more positive."

By now, it was clear Rafter was again a major threat. It was also clear that his athletic serve-and-volley style was not some anachronistic, quixotic tribute to Stefan Edberg and the former Australian greats. It was a very viable approach to modern tennis, and the fact that he was one of the very few top pros rushing the net after first and second serves and chipping and charging on his return meant that many of his opponents felt ill at ease.

But Rafter not only benefited from the novelty effect in 1997, he also benefited from Roche's expert advice on volleying and on his earnest efforts to improve his conditioning and weaknesses from the baseline.

In January 1995, when the wave of homegrown hype enveloping him crashed into the sand in the fourth round of the Australian Open with his straight-set loss against Andre Agassi, Rafter's ground strokes were a major liability.

It was not simply a question of Rafter being psychologically unprepared to handle the great expectations of an anxious tennis nation that had seen its wealth of champions reduced to Pat Cash and change. It was also a question of technical limitations. "I was sort of spiraling down a bit at that stage anyway," Rafter says of the loss to Agassi. "I had the momentum going down. He sort of kicked me a little bit."

Rafter would spend the next 16 months heading in the same direction, partly because of persistent pain in his right wrist. By September, with Australia facing a relegation match on clay in Hungary, Rafter was so unsure of himself that he declined to play. The Australians ended up losing and falling out of the World Group. "I let my team down," Rafter says. "That's the worst memory I have in my career."

Two months later, he underwent surgery to repair torn cartilage in his wrist but then came back too quickly at the 1996 Australian Open and lost in the second round. He would miss the next 31/2 months because of more wrist pain. As if to remind him that his luck had gone bad, he also sprained his ankle during a training run. "I really must have upset the Big Fella upstairs," he said during his long layoff. "This is a worrying time for my career."

Patrick was not the only Rafter who was worried.

"He did put a tremendous amount of pressure on himself," Jocelyn says. "He told me once recently, 'I play for myself now.' And I asked, 'Patrick, who were you playing for before?' And he said, 'You. The country. The family.' "

Rafter had some good reasons to feel beholden to his family, all of whom play tennis. During his youth, Jocelyn had spent a large chunk of her time shuttling him to practices and escorting him to junior tournaments and Australian satellite events-no easy task with eight other children to raise.

Patrick and most of his siblings were born in Mount Isa, an isolated, inland copper-mining city full of young families and sports facilities where their father, Jim, worked as an accountant for 18 years. When Rafter was 7, the family moved to a farm north of Brisbane near the Sunshine Coast in Eumundie, which remains their mutual touchstone.

They have a new neighbor in Thomas Muster, who recently bought property on the same road. But despite their now-trendy address, the Rafters were a family of modest means. At one point Patrick's brother Geoff, an acupuncturist six years his senior who had traveled with Patrick during his early years on the satellites, handed him his life savings-20,000 Australian dollars (U.S. $14,000)-and told him that if his career did not pan out, there would be no need to pay it back. "My family has made a lot of sacrifices for me," Patrick says.

And it is Rafter's large, close family that many Australians feel has shaped him into such an appealingly unaffected champion ("I'm going to be the same sack of crap I am," Rafter said after winning the Open). After all, mate, it's difficult to develop an outsized ego with three older brothers beating on it. "I couldn't put it better," says John Fitzgerald, who coached Rafter on a part-time basis in 1997.

The hype of 1995 has returned with an exclamation point, only this time it might not be hype. "Pat was popular at home way beyond his results before," Fitzgerald says. "But now his results and popularity are in harmony."

Though it is always terribly risky to predict how twentysomething athletes with teen-idol looks will react to adulation and wealth, it appears the new and improved Rafter is in harmony, as well.

"I've changed a bit," Rafter said last year. "When you are coming up, you get a little bit spoiled and think this is how it's supposed to be. You start being a little bit absent-minded, a little bit rude. I've been through that. I know what to look out for, what to expect."

But Jocelyn Rafter still wanted to be sure when she finally got a moment alone with Patrick during the Davis Cup semifinal against the Americans last September in Washington, D.C.

"I told him, 'It's so important to keep your feet on the ground, to know where you're coming from and not get in the clouds too high,' " she said. "And Patrick looked at me and said, 'Mum, I know. I know where I'm at.' "

HOW PATRICK RAFTER IMPROVED

(As of November 3, 1997)

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