A talent as scarce as water in a desert

Mehdi Bouras is one of those guys who speaks softly and carries a big stick. His is a tennis racket. UNLV men's coach Owen Hambrook can remember his best tennis player -- one of the Rebels' best ever -- becoming demonstrative only once.

One day after practice, Bouras asked for a word with Hambrook. It was clear that something was bothering him.

Was it a flaw in his backhand? Something to do with his studies? A girlfriend, perhaps?

It was none of those things.

One of his teammates had left the water running in the shower.

"He said, 'Coach, where I grew up, water is scarce,' " Hambrook recalled.

"He doesn't say much, so when he does ..."

It's like E.F Hutton. People listen. It was the last time one of the Rebels left the water running in the shower.

Bouras, 6 feet tall, wiry build, big serve, wicked ground strokes, was born in Algeria and lived there until he was 6, then spent his formative years across the Sinai Peninsula in Oman, where they have dates and limes and oil reserves. His father, Rachid, was a sports doctor, and the family ultimately wound up in Paris. Mehdi graduated from Lycee Marie Curie in Versailles. Water wasn't as scarce in France.

For most Americans, Algeria conjures images of sand dunes and sheiks and mysterious women shrouded in veils. And camels. Lots of camels.

Bouras chuckled when I asked about the camels. He has never seen one, at least not in its native habitat. "I'm sure they have some in the desert," he said.

In Algeria, Bouras and his family lived in Algiers, the African nation's capital and largest city, with a teeming population of around 5 million. In Oman, they lived in Muscat, also the capital, also with a teeming population of more than a million. People. Not camels.

In France, there are also few camels -- or Camels. Only Gitanes and Gauloises. Bouras confirmed that French people smoke a lot of cigarettes and, yes, he has seen a street mime or two. So those images remain as conjured.

So does the one Bouras had of Las Vegas. In keeping with that speak-softly, big-stick thing, he remembers uttering just one word upon getting off the airplane.

"Wow!"

He loves it here -- Las Vegas, and America in general -- but wishes it were easier to get around.

"In Europe, it's easier to go from France to Spain than it is from New York to Los Angeles," said Bouras, who speaks fluent French, English, Spanish and just enough Arabic to rock the casbah.

Sometimes, as he has discovered, it's hard to go from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.

"One time the guys were talking about how we were going to get to Irvine, and I said we could take the train," he said. "They all laughed at me."

Bouras set a UNLV record by being named Mountain West Conference player of the week six times during his senior season. He has earned national rankings of 56th in singles and 34th in doubles, with partner Bernard Schoeman.

When the NCAA Championships begin Wednesday at Stanford's Taube Family Tennis Center in Palo Alto, Calif., Bouras and Schoeman will be there as UNLV's first men's doubles qualifier since 1999, two years after the Rebels' Luke Smith and Tim Blenkiron won it all.

Bouras, the MWC Player of the Year, will also play singles at Stanford, the first Rebel to do that since Elliot Wronski in 2007. Bouras' grade-point average is 3.55, and he was UNLV's 2009 Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

"The coach at BYU said he's one of those guys that come along every 100 years," Hambrook said. "He's one of those guys that come along every 10 years, for sure. He's the first guy here for practice, and you have to drag him off the court. He's just a great student-athlete."

And a conservationist. Bouras has set his sights on a pro tennis career; if that doesn't pan out, there's always Greenpeace.

Given the unpredictable nature of American college tennis, the lack of scouting reports and so forth, it's hard to predict how Bouras (and Schoeman) will do at the NCAAs, how it's all going to end for him as a Rebel.

Only that when it does, the water won't still be running.

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.