Tennis : Lloyd Overcomes Slow Start and Defeats Graf, 6-4, 6-2

Chris Evert Lloyd rebounded from a slow start and used a patient base-line assault to defeat 16-year-old West German Steffi Graf, 6-4, 6-2, Saturday in the women’s final of the $1.8-million Lipton International Players Championship at Boca Raton, Fla.

The top-seeded Lloyd picked up $112,500 in winning her 144th tournament title--pushing her over the $6.5-million mark in career earnings. The second-seeded Graf won $56,250.

Lloyd beat Graf by the same score in the semifinals of this tournament last year, but she had to fight a lot harder this time.

Graf took a 3-1 lead in the first set Saturday before Lloyd rebounded.

“I was really happy with the way I pulled out the first set,” Lloyd said. “At 4-all, I felt I played two great games. Then I started playing a lot better in the second set. I started hitting out and matching her ground strokes.”

After losing the first game of the second set, Lloyd demoralized her opponent by rolling through five straight games.

“In the beginning, she was doing errors,” Graf said. “I had chances in the first set. But she obviously knows what to do when it gets close.

“She didn’t make any errors in the second set.”

Lloyd had at least half of her 16 unforced errors in the first four games. Graf finished with 34 unforced errors.

Lloyd, ranked No.2 in the world to Graf’s No. 6, also beat the young West German convincingly three weeks ago in a final at Key Biscayne, Fla. The two battled through six games before Lloyd won nine of the next 10 to win, 6-3, 6-1.

With the victory Saturday, Lloyd pulled ahead of top-ranked Martina Navratilova in the season-long Virginia Slims Championship Series. She has 3,050 points to 3,000 for Navratilova, with four events left in the season, which ends in March.

Top-seeded Ivan Lendl of Czechoslovakia plays second-seeded Mats Wilander of Sweden for the men’s title today. Both won their semifinal matches Friday by default.

Jimmy Connors defaulted against Lendl, refusing to continue play because of a disputed line call, while Wilander got past Stefan Edberg when Edberg quit in the second set because of a stomach-muscle strain.

Brad Gilbert and Vincent Van Patten won the men’s doubles title by default Saturday over Anders Jarryd and Edberg because of Edberg’s injury.