TENNIS Gullickson is top American junior

Her father, Bill, pitched for five Major League baseball teams.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
WIMBLEDON, England -- If you were looking for the former baseball player around Court 14 on Friday at the All-England Club, he wasn't hard to spot. Bill Gullickson was the only one on these grounds, maybe ever, spitting chewing tobacco into a Styrofoam cup in his hand.
Gullickson pitched for five Major League teams, including a half-season in 1987 with the Yankees, plus two years in Japan. From 1979 until his retirement in 1994, he won 162 games in the majors, with a 3.93 ERA -- not a bad little career. Ever since quitting, Gullickson has been chasing around his athletic kids, who are slowly becoming more famous than himself.
His second-oldest daughter, Carly, 16, was here at Wimbledon these last two weeks, in both the women's and girls' draws. She won three qualifiers to get into the main draw, a great success, then lost in the first round. She was seeded No. 2 in the girls' draw, before falling in the quarterfinals to Emma Laine of Finland.
Bill attended all of Carly's matches, including the mess against Laine, when her serves were spraying all over the court.
"There are a lot of hills and valleys. Big ones, low ones," Bill said. "When I retired, I swore I was done with traveling. But I'm here to teach her how to live on the road, to accept defeat along with the victories."
Carly may have inherited the competitiveness from Bill, but her tennis comes from her mother, Sandy, who played for Western Kentucky on scholarship. The couple has six kids, all of them active in sports, all of them with names that start with the letter "C," five of them born in different cities during their father's meandering career.
Younger daughter working hard
Another daughter, Chelsey, 12, is quickly working her way up the tennis junior ranks. The family recently moved from a suburb of Nashville, Tenn., to Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., in order to nurture the children's careers.
Carly vaguely remembers the end of her dad's baseball career in Detroit, being dragged to games at age seven with her mother and siblings.
"Mostly, I told them I wanted to hurry up and go home," Carly said.
Carly is America's most promising junior right now, with an attacking game that feels most comfortable on grass. She is hoping for a wild card into the main draw at the U.S. Open next month, though she will go through qualifying if necessary. She will also play in her third juniors event at Flushing Meadows.
Her favorite tournament, though, is Wimbledon.
"This is just so much more relaxed," she said. "After the matches in New York, there's always a press conference, even for the juniors. But I like it there."
Her ranking will be around No. 200 after Wimbledon, and she has set her goal for No. 50 by this time next year.
"I want to be able to get into tournaments on the strength of my record, on my own," she said.