And Steffi Will Play the Winner

By Tom Callahan

Among the many piques and volleys of tennis, this year's Wimbledon had a distinct feeling of passage. For the first time since Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert doubled in love 14 years ago, two fresh champions emerged, one for the ages. The torch that Steffi Graf has been tugging at for more than a year, but that Martina Navratilova managed to hold fast last summer at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, was finally handed over gracefully, emphatically and a little sadly.

Hoping at 31 for a ninth Wimbledon singles title, the one that would leave Helen Wills Moody and everyone else behind, Navratilova warmed up for Graf with a 41st victory over Evert in their 78-match marathon. "These two are ranked 10 and 11 now," observed the former U.S. Davis Cupper Gene Scott. "Steffi is 1 through 9."

Thirty-three and ready to try a second serve at marriage, to the mountain skier Andy Mill, Evert departed the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club for the first time in almost 20 years without the sure knowledge that she would return. "I don't know; we'll see," she said. During their tight semifinal, which may have turned on a bad call, Evert sensed a vulnerability in her old adversary that made her unhesitatingly pick Graf. "Martina's body language looks confident, but I can tell she isn't."

Reading the moods of the robust but fragile Czechoslovak has never been especially difficult, going back to Martina's butterball days around the time of her 1975 defection. A stinging loss then could push her past tears to sobs at courtside. Sculpting her body to a point near perfection, and maybe to half a crank beyond that, Navratilova eventually learned to do her crying offstage. With bruised eyes, she reappeared from the locker room 45 minutes after the only Wimbledon final she ever lost, to say the right things. "It's not so bad. I'm happy for Steffi today . . . She's a nice human being. I could feel what she was feeling. I know what it is."

Without a rain delay, it could scarcely be Wimbledon. But the pause in the third set with Graf on a rampage only stressed the powerful points, backhands and back of the hands that Steffi was making in rising up from her bland opening set to take nine of ten games going away. Tellingly, during the recess, Navratilova sought hurried treatment for a complaining leg muscle while Graf sprawled like a teenager in front of the TV. "Bodies warm up easier at 19 than they do at 31," sighed the woman finished off (5-7, 6-2, 6-1) by the girl.

"It's a sad thing for her," said Graf. "She really had felt that she could win it. This is her special tournament." But Steffi never gave much thought to losing. "It would not be the way to go to the Grand Slam," she said. Australia, France and England are in hand, and only next month's American Open remains, in the first sweeping quest on either the men's or women's side since Margaret Court's in 1970. A "special player," a "super player," Martina called Graf, and some say she may soon be as strapped for an opponent as Mike Tyson. "Except I'm not talking about retiring," Steffi said.

The All-German Championship of popular forecasts was right as the rain until Stefan Edberg cut in on Boris Becker, 4-6, 7-6, 6-4, 6-2. Five years ago at Wimbledon, they opposed each other during the junior championships, and Edberg both beat Becker and won the tournament to nominate himself as the coming star. But the two Australian titles and some $4 million he has earned at 22 have managed to appear paltry next to Becker's back-to-back Wimbledons in 1985 and 1986 and world celebrity at 20.

On an exuberant imagination, Becker has somersaulted into almost every tennis vacuum, though especially the one in the States. Connors and John McEnroe go on milking their death scene from Camille; the Connecticut- Czechoslovak Ivan Lendl continues to stand by, waiting for U.S. citizenship; and Becker simply makes everyone smile. Losing to the sleepiest of the Swedes, he obstreperously slammed down his racket and curdlingly called out to the sky. But at the end, Becker gently touched Edberg's golden trophy and charmed people again. "I just wanted to remember how it felt," Boris laughed.

Saying "I hardly could miss the ball," Edberg for once displayed the serenity and not just the stoicism of the five-time champion Bjorn Borg. "All of us in Sweden grew up watching Borg in the finals of Wimbledon. Now I've won Wimbledon too. It's quite fun actually." Asked if it might change him, he responded, "It hasn't yet." (At least half an hour had gone by.) In other words, he would be maintaining his English residence in Chelsea? "No, Kensington." And not be moving to Monte Carlo, nearer the night life and farther from the taxmen? "It's not me." As a matter of fact, Edberg describes his fundamental hope as the ability to continue patronizing a particular pizza parlor in anonymity.

Fretting for the health of the game if it is deprived of him, McEnroe darkly took stock of his flagging comeback and called this a "critical time for tennis and me." He said he could envision American tennis becoming like soccer, "where the rest of the world is crazy about it, and nobody in the U.S. gives a damn." But Lendl, 28, the lead Swede Mats Wilander, 23, the Australian Pat Cash, 23, Becker and Edberg are at least worth one damn, and Steffi will play the winner.