Mandlikova Has the Last Laugh and Upsets Lloyd; Plays Navratilova in Final

Four times a year, at tour stops known as Grand Slam events, Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert Lloyd get together for that little inside joke they have on women’s professional tennis.

Well, Martina, it’s us against the world again.

Yeah, Chris. The world doesn’t stand a chance.

Snicker, snicker.

Late Friday afternoon, however, sometime around dusk, the laughing stopped. The two-person clique that is traditionally known as the U.S. Open Women’s Championship Final is no more.

Hana Mandlikova, normally just a sidelight to The Chris and Martina Show, pulled off the punch line of the year in her semifinal match with Lloyd.

Get this: Mandlikova won.

Forgetting for two hours that she went into the match 3-18 against Lloyd in her career and 1-9 against Lloyd in Grand Slams, that she does not have the intestinal fortitude to win this kind of match, Mandlikova rallied from a one-set deficit to brush the U.S. Open’s top-seeded player out of the tournament, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3.

She did it with the type of tennis people have been expecting from Mandlikova for years, the type of tennis seen too infrequently when the bright lights start to shine on her.

She drilled serves and sprinted to the net for aggressive put-away volleys. She crushed overhead winners, ran down lobs . . . even flopped on the concrete, a la Boris Becker, in pursuit of passing shots.

She also committed unforced errors--28 of them--but that’s also to be expected.

Unexpectedly, she overcame them.

And now, Mandlikova is in the U.S. Open final, where today she will face two-time defending champion Navratilova, a 6-2, 6-3 semifinal winner over West Germany’s Steffi Graf. It will mark Mandlikova’s first appearance in a Grand Slam final since 1982, when she lost to Lloyd at Flushing Meadow.

The Big Two has been broken up . . . or at least placed on temporary suspension. Of course, in Mandlikova’s mind, there never really was a Big Two.

A Big Three is more like it.

“I think I am at their level,” Mandlikova said. “I am playing as well as they are. They are just a little older and more experienced than me.”

Lloyd wasn’t ready to go quite that far.

“Well, she’s No. 3,” Lloyd said. “There’s not much of a difference between 1 and 2 . . . (but) she has to win a few more tournaments to say something like that.”

A victory today over Navratilova would greatly enhance Mandlikova’s argument, but Lloyd said she couldn’t fathom such a thought.

Lloyd’s answer was blunt and to the point when a reporter asked if Mandlikova could beat Navratilova in the final.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so. You know, it was a pretty close match between Hana and me today--and I didn’t even play 70% of what I can play. So I think that Hana’s going to have to play better and cut down on the errors. She still made a few too many errors for Martina.”

Lloyd allowed that Mandlikova did “play very well” and “was really on today. She served really well and hit a lot of great lunging volleys.”

But Lloyd said the biggest factor in Mandlikova’s triumph was Lloyd.

“I just wasn’t charged up as usual, considering it was the semifinals,” she said. “It’s nobody’s fault but my own.

“You just can’t get psyched up for every single match. You know, this is the first time in a long time in a Grand Slam tournament that I didn’t slap my thigh like I usually do, and I didn’t jump up and down. My heart just wasn’t in it--and that’s the truth.”

Why not?

“I guess because I’m not a machine,” Lloyd said. “There are going to be days when you feel a little more motivated than other days.”

There must be something going around at Flushing Meadow. Yannick Noah sleepwalks through his quarterfinal match against Ivan Lendl, and Chris Evert Lloyd says she can’t get motivated for a semifinal match that could set up a reunion with her greatest rival, Navratilova.

If you can’t get motivated here, it might be time to get that pulse checked.

Mandlikova, accused so often in the past of lacking heart in crucial matches, described Lloyd’s admission as “very funny.”

Very funny, maybe, as in sour grapes.

“As you know, she is a very tough player and is (known as) the strongest mentally,” Mandlikova said. “In the past, I have lost matches being a set up and 3-0 up. So, I was not really thinking if her heart was in it or not. At the semifinals of the U.S. Open, I would think your heart should be in it.”

More importantly, on this day, Mandlikova’s head was in the match. Sometimes, when Mandlikova blows leads of 5-2 and 5-1--as she did last month against Claudia Kohde-Kilsch in Los Angeles--people have to wonder.

“Every time I get to the finals, it’s always, ‘So, you improved your mental concentration,’ ” Mandlikova said. “Then, I lose a match and it’s the same story again.

“I work on my head and my game all the time. It’s not concentration. Everybody loses sometime. I’m human and so is everyone. I’m a riskier player than Chris, and it may look like I lose my concentration, but it’s not true.”

She didn’t lose it Saturday, not when she had to battle through:

--The disappointment of losing the first set after leading, 2-0.

--Triple-break point in the third game of the third set. Down, 0-40, Mandlikova rallied to hold serve and open a 2-1 advantage.

--An exasperating sixth game of the final set, which was deadlocked at deuce 12 times before Mandlikova broke Lloyd’s serve.

--A mini-rally by Lloyd, who fought off four match points, but not a fifth, as Mandlikova finally clinched the victory with an ace and a service winner.

The key question now: Can Mandlikova do it two days in a row?

“I need to play an absolutely different game,” Mandlikova said. “I have to serve better, come in more and take the net away from Martina. It will be a tough match, but I will try my best.”

Mandlikova is 5-14 overall against Navratilova, but a respectable 2-3 in the past two years. She upset Navratilova in the semifinals of the U.S. Indoors this March.

Beating Navratilova here, however, is something different altogether. The tournament’s second-seeded player hasn’t lost a set in six rounds and eliminated Graf Friday in just 56 minutes.

Navratilova had 15 service winners, broke Graf’s serve five times, had six aces and finished with a service percentage of 67.3% By match’s end, just to maintain interest, Navratilova began experimenting with her serve.

“I felt like a pitcher out there--mixing in a slider here, then coming in with a fastball down the middle,” Navratilova said. “When you are serving that well, you can play with it a little. It was fun.”

Navratilova’s match was the first of the day. She spent most of her press conference answering questions about her anticipated showdown with Lloyd.

But Navratilova did point out that it was possible for Mandlikova to crash the party.

“I’m going to watch the match,” she said. “Hana has a better chance than in the past--I’d say 30-70--simply because of her attitude.”

A few hours later, Mandlikova went and knocked Lloyd 100% out of the tournament.