International Players Tennis Championships : Graf, Evert Move Into Final With Easy Wins

Top-seeded Steffi Graf won a battle of 18-year-olds, and second-seeded Chris Evert beat a player half her age Thursday to advance to the women’s final of the International Players Championships.

Graf, the defending champion, swept past unseeded Stephanie Rehe of Highland, Calif., 6-3, 6-1, while Evert beat 16-year-old Mary Joe Fernandez of Miami, 6-2, 6-1, in the other semifinal.

The two will meet in Saturday’s final. Evert, the 1986 champion, lost to Graf in last year’s final.

The men’s semifinals in the $2.1-million tournament will be played today. Top-seeded Mats Wilander meets sixth-seeded Yannick Noah, while second-seeded Jimmy Connors faces defending champion Miloslav Mecir, who is seeded third.

Graf fell behind, 2-0, and committed 10 unforced errors in the first three games against Rehe. But the match turned in the fourth game when the West German took advantage of three double faults to break Rehe’s serve.

Rehe’s service was shaky for the rest of the match, and Graf broke again in the eighth game and in the first, fifth and seventh games of the second set.

Evert needed only 66 minutes to eliminate the 15th-seeded Fernandez.

“I got wiped off the court,” said Fernandez, who is ranked 20th in the world. “She played pretty tough. She didn’t make many errors.”

After Fernandez held her first serve to tie the match at one game apiece, Evert was in total control. She took the first five games of the second set, winning 11 straight points in one span and 8 straight in another.

Fernandez, who made 43 unforced errors to 19 for Evert, said her five previous matches in the tournament took a toll.

“As the match progressed, I was getting to the ball later and later,” she said. “I was a little slow.”

Evert, 33, who makes her home in Boca Raton, Fla., has a 5-0 advantage in their rivalry. But after watching Fernandez upset third-seeded Gabriela Sabatini in the fourth round, Evert said she was nervous before the match.

“In this kind of match, I have everything to lose and nothing to gain,” she said.

Crowd support for the two South Florida players was evenly divided. About 100 of Fernandez’s classmates from Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart, who were given the day off by school officials, chanted, “Mary Joe, Mary Joe,” before and after the match.

“It reminded me of when I was her age,” said Evert, who broke onto the international tennis scene when she was a 16-year-old high school student in Fort Lauderdale. “When I was playing Billie Jean (King), my classmates came out a couple of times.”