Pfaff Beats Sukova, Advances to Quarterfinals

Asking Eva Pfaff about her knee injury is a little like asking Zsa Zsa Gabor about her husband.

Knee injury? Which one?

Take your pick. There’s the torn cartilage in the right knee, suffered during the autumn of 1981. And there’s the overstressed tendon in the left knee, incurred during the spring of 1984.

A finger-long scar adorns Pfaff’s right knee. A plastic bag filled with ice is strapped to the left.

They are living bookends, Exhibits A and B in the trials and tribulations of a tennis player you’ve probably never heard of--but might have had her knees been able to avoid some hard knocks.

In the 1983 Canadian Open, at the age of 22, she held two match points against Martina Navratilova before losing, 7-5, in the third set to the world’s best women’s player. A couple months later, Pfaff broke into the top 20, her ranking climbing as high as No. 17.

Flash ahead to 1985. Two weeks ago at Newport, R.I., Pfaff led Chris Evert Lloyd in the first set at 5-4, 40-love . . . before eventually losing, 7-5, 6-2, in the semifinals.

And then there was Thursday’s third-round match in the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles tournament, with Pfaff scoring a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Helena Sukova, the world’s sixth-ranked player and the third-seeded player in the tournament at Manhattan Country Club in Manhattan Beach.

These are the makings of an impressive resume, the credentials of a contender who should be stalking the highest echelon of women’s tennis.

So why hasn’t anybody yet learned how to pronounce the last name Pfaff (it’s Foff) on the first try?

And why did she bow out of seven straight tournaments in the first round during the past nine months--losing to people named Christiane Jolissaint, Lea Antonoplis, Vicki Nelson, Rene Uys and Petra Keppeler?

And how come her world ranking rests at the current level of 47--making a comeback from last summer’s low-water mark of 87?

It all comes back to the knees . . . and Pfaff’s attempts to deal with the problems they created.

“I played for two years without knowing I had torn cartilage,” Pfaff said, referring to her right knee, which finally required surgery in March of 1984. “Then, when I came back, the other one started hurting, and I had to take two months off.

“When I started playing tournaments again, I was so eager, so loaded with ambition, that I tightened up. I couldn’t win at all.”

From last November until the Newport, R.I., tournament, Pfaff entered nine tournaments--and couldn’t make it beyond the second round in any. And when she wasn’t losing early in a tournament, she was pulling out of others.

“It got to where I was calling the WTA (Women’s Tennis Assn.) office every Monday and telling them, ‘I won’t play this one, I’ll call you next Monday,’ ” Pfaff said. “I was entering everything and pulling out of everything.”

The pain still comes and goes, but when the knees are willing, Pfaff is capable of doing what she did to Sukova Thursday.

Sukova was the same player who blitzed Pfaff in the first round of the French Open, 6-1, 6-2. In their first meeting since then, Pfaff dominated, opening leads of 4-1 in the first set and 5-1 in the second.

The swift victory, which lasted 1 hour 6 minutes, sent Pfaff into today’s quarterfinals against eighth-seeded Carling Bassett, who advanced with a 6-1, 6-4 decision over Rosalyn Fairbank.

Pfaff will be joined in the quarterfinals by fellow West German Claudia Kohde-Kilsch. Kohde-Kilsch, seeded fifth in the tournament, downed Laura Gildemeister, 6-3, 6-2.

Other seeded players to advance Thursday were Hana Mandlikova (No. 1), who routed Sylvia Hanika, 6-1, 6-2; Pam Shriver (No. 2), who downed Peanut Louie, 7-5, 6-1; Zina Garrison (No. 4), who defeated Elise Burgin, 6-2, 6-2, and Bettina Bunge, seeded ninth, eliminated Kathy Rinaldi, 6-3, 6-3.

Pfaff may rate low on the name-recognition scale, but that could change with the continuation of the play she has demonstrated here.

And another reason:

Boris Becker.

“He’s done the most incredible thing for German tennis,” Pfaff said. “Thirty-one percent of all the TVs in the country were tuned in to the Wimbledon finals. At least three magazines had him on the front page, with six-to-10 page stories. And they don’t know anything about tennis.