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Those who saw Kovacs at North Conway last week were impressed with his happy-go-lucky antics as well as his lightning backhand. To California galleries, Kovacs is known as the Max Baer of tennis. Once, when an airplane zoomed overhead during a critical match, he stopped play, shouldered his racket, pretended to machine-gun the plane. Another time, when it looked as though he was on the short end of a love set, he knelt down on the court, salaamed and chanted "Allah" a dozen times, then proceeded to win the set. During the San Francisco city championship a few years ago, Kovacs was about to serve for match point. He threw three balls into the air at once, hit the middle one for an ace.