WIMBLEDON ’87 : Navratilova Won’t Let Sentiment Stand in Way : She Moves Into Final Against Graf With a 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 Victory Over Evert

Call this one, “The Golden Girls Do Wimbledon.”

Since they had already met 72 times, staring each other down across a tennis net for big bucks and eternal glory, Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert had to come up with a gimmick this time. After all, this is Wimbledon.

So before and after their semifinal match Thursday, they played up the angle of two old warhorses nearing the end of the dusty old trail, fighting it out every inch of the way but pals to the end.

It got a little sappy at times, but the tennis portion of the plot was strong enough to carry the semi-maudlin story line.

Playing like a couple of fiery teen-agers, not matrons nearing retirement, Navratilova, age 30, and Evert, 32, lit up Centre Court for two hours.

Navratilova won it, 6-2, 5-7, 6-4, to stretch her Wimbledon win streak to 40 matches and keep alive her shot at a record sixth consecutive Wimbledon singles title, and eighth in all.

“I’m flying high,” Navratilova said.

And in the traveling duel that started in Akron, Ohio, back in 1973 and has probably played a stadium or municipal court near you, Navratilova owns a 39-34 series lead over Evert.

Meanwhile, over the shoulders of the golden girls looms the golden child, Steffi Graf. She gave Navratilova something to think about by crushing Pam Shriver Thursday in the longest 51 minutes of Shriver’s life, 6-0, 6-2.

Graf plays Navratilova for the women’s title Saturday.

Shriver the nonsurvivor, like everyone else involved with the day’s tennis action, didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Here’s your emotional scorecard: Shriver laughed, Navratilova cried and felt sad yet happy, Evert smiled and felt proud for herself and happy for Navratilova, and Graf said she was happy, but that was no doubt because she was on her way to celebrate her win over Shriver by finding a practice court where she would hammer awesome forehands until the balls came unfuzzed.

Evert was happy and proud because, “I can’t play any better. . . . This is probably the happiest I’ve felt after a loss in a long time.”

Navratilova was sad to the point of crying because she beat her old pal, but happy because she was reunited with an old and dear friend--her serve. It had cruelly deserted her this year in losses at the Australian and French opens, and at Eastbourne, England, and there was talk that Navratilova had developed the tennis server’s equivalent of the golf “yips.” If so, it would be fatal to her career.

But Navratilova called in a serve doctor at Wimbledon, Australian coach Neale Fraser, a fellow lefty. Thursday, Navratilova used the serve very effectively. She zinged in 4 aces and had 21 service winners, all on first serve, to 5 service winners for Evert.

“That’s her big weapon,” Evert said. “She’s going to have to get a lot of first serves in against Steffi, 80% to 90% of her first serves, in order to win. Steffi moves better than I do; she will really take advantage of Martina’s second serve.”

Evert moved nicely herself Thursday. There was nothing second-rate about the tennis played by the golden girls on Centre Court.

“I think we are seeing the sunset of her (Navratilova’s) career, and that of Chris Evert,” said Wimbledon sage Ted Tinling before the start of the tournament. “But sunsets can be beautiful things, can’t they?”

This one is worth a snapshot or two. The two players kidded and applauded one another between points, played somewhere very near the tops of their respective games, and walked off the court with their arms around each other’s shoulders.

Navratilova won the first set with a flourish, finishing it off with a Boris Becker-style dive volley and somersault, degree of difficulty 9.0.

Opening the second set, Evert survived double-break point to take a 1-0 lead, then traded breaks with Navratilova in the sixth and seventh games. Evert won the set, 7-5, when Navratilova double-faulted to 15-40 and then Evert, working from the base line, forced Navratilova into a wide backhand volley.

Evert was rolling. Briefly. Serving to open the third set, she went up, 30-love, but Navratilova then scored the key break of the match with a drop volley, a forehand passing shot, an Evert forehand mistake and a Navratilova forehand that hit the net cord and trickled onto Evert’s side to die.

When Navratilova was within one game of winning the match, she had second thoughts.

“At 5-4, I thought about it (wishing her friend Chris could win the match),” Martina said. “I said to myself, ‘God, you’re crazy to think about it.’ Knowing we’re close to the end (of careers), people have been writing Chris off. It takes a lot away from me winning that I had to beat Chris.

“After the match, I had tears in my eyes, and it wasn’t for my winning, it was because of Chris losing. I wish she could win it one more time.”

If Evert does retire soon, as she hints she might, her career won’t be anything to cry about. She has won three Wimbledons and has reached at least the semifinals in all but one of the last 49 Grand Slam events she has entered.

And Thursday, Evert left Wimbledon fans with some memories of a great and graceful player. While Navratilova was using her superior power and incredible acrobatics, Evert was floating and stinging, the same style she first exhibited here 15 years ago, half her lifetime ago.

She doesn’t play this well every time out any more, but Evert picked a good spot.

“I played really, really well, I can’t ask any more of myself than the way I played today,” Evert said. “I really felt like I put everything on the line. I didn’t choke, I felt really competitive.”

When told that Navratilova had said she briefly felt sorrow for Evert during the match, Evert did a comedy eye-roll.

Evert knows the public will only buy so much of this battling buddies routine. What they want at Wimbledon is more drama, like the challenge from the kiddie corps, and that’s where Steffi Graf comes in.

When Pam Shriver beat Helena Sukova in an exhausting match Wednesday, Shriver said she felt “like a tossed salad.” Thursday, Graf turned Shriver into cole slaw.

Shriver, one of the more popular players on the tour, quickly became an object of pity as Graf won the first set in 18 ruthless minutes. Former tennis great Ann Jones, watching the mugging, commented with British aplomb, “Being comprehensively thrashed is not the ideal.”

Shriver said: “I was overwhelmed by the sheer power of Steffi. . . . I cannot believe she is only 18 and is so strong. The ball comes off her racket with unbelievable force.”

Good thing, because for box-office appeal, Graf needs something awesome in the final to top the emotionalism of the Navratilova-Evert semifinal.

“When we shook hands,” Navratilova said, “Chris said, ‘I hope I didn’t take too much out of you for the final.’ I mean, what a thing to say!”

Beautiful, simply beautiful. But enough, already. Pass Navratilova a hanky and let’s get on with the tennis.

After their singles matches, defending champions Navratilova and Shriver, five-time winners and finalists for the last six years, were defeated in the quarterfinals of women’s doubles by Svetlana Parkhomenko and Larissa Savchenko of the Soviet Union, 6-2, 6-4.