WIMBLEDON TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIPS : A Big Day Without an Ending : Edberg Rallies to Beat Mecir; Becker Leads Lendl, 2-1

The day trailed off into darkness, and all you knew for sure was that Stefan Edberg had made the men’s final. Everything else, meaning the semifinal match between Ivan Lendl and Boris Becker, was lost to the gloom that inevitably envelops these tennis championships.

You can blame Wimbledon, which has no lights. You can blame Edberg, who was down two sets before coming back to beat Miloslav Mecir, 4-6, 2-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4, in the first of Friday’s marathon semifinals. You can blame the rain, which followed and caused almost an hour delay.

But mostly you can blame Becker, a two-time champion who should know better. He couldn’t put away a dead duck at the net to close Lendl down in the tiebreaker, a match point you could have scored. Lendl, a no-time champion who does know better, took the point and went on to win the tiebreaker, 10-8, to prevent a straight-sets humiliation and to push the conclusion to today.

That match, with Becker leading, 6-4, 6-3, 6-7, will be finished today, a preliminary to the women’s championship.

Becker and Lendl will begin playing an hour before NBC’s telecast goes on the air at 8 a.m., PST. If they are still playing when NBC’s coverage begins, the end of the match will be shown before the Navratilova-Graf match. However long the Becker-Lendl match goes, taped highlights will be shown later in the telecast.

The women’s match hardly needs an undercard. Martina Navratilova is going for a record ninth title, her seventh straight. And Steffi Graf, 19, who lost to her here last year in the final, closes in on a rare Grand Slam. Drama enough, one would think.

But the women must share the stage, as Friday was just too short for the men’s theatrics.

The day started routinely enough. That is, with rain. But it cleared for the Edberg-Mecir match. In appreciation of the rare window of sunlight, Mecir began to dismantle the Swede. Quickly. He raced ahead, 6-4, 6-2, and appeared on his way to his first Wimbledon final.

All he had to do was seize any one of the four break points in the seventh game of the third set. He didn’t and fell back, 3-4, in games.

That was it for the man they call Big Cat. “I think he played very well in the last three sets,” Mecir, said, classically understating. “I made a couple of mistakes but not too many. He was the one who was hitting the winners. If I didn’t hit a winner return, he killed the volley.”

Edberg’s momentum was such that in his last three service games he gave up all of one point.

“When I won the third set, I thought I had a chance to come back, actually,” Edberg said. “At 3-3, 0-40, that was a very important stage of the match.”

The ninth-seeded Mecir, who squandered six break points in the set, committed four straight errors before Edberg missed a backhand volley to make it deuce. After Mecir netted a service return, Edberg put away a forehand volley to hold his serve and take a 4-3 lead.

Edberg, 22, said this kind of comeback is old hat.

“It is not the first time that I have come back from two sets down to win a match,” he said. “The first time was when I won the Australian Open in ’85.”

That happened in the fourth round, in a slightly less conspicuous match. For Edberg, seeded third in the tournament, this is his first Wimbledon final, although he’s twice won the Australian Open (1985 and ‘87). He’s always been around the final, though; he’s been in seven Grand Slam semifinals and four of the last five.

His match was regarded as somewhat of a warmup to the heavy hitters who were to follow.

Top-seeded Lendl has never won this tournament and has been on something of a mission. His route to the semifinals has been marked by tiebreakers but has been otherwise direct. The same for Becker, who got knocked out last year after capping his teen years with two straight Wimbledon titles. Becker hadn’t lost a set until Friday.

And it didn’t look as if he would at that. Even though his considerable serve wouldn’t fall, he was in the process of embarrassing Lendl.

Becker suffered a break in the first game and then raced through the Czech expatriate. If Becker had trouble with his first serve, consider poor Lendl. He had six double-faults in the first set, giving up set point on one of them.

The second set went even easier for Becker, though he still had trouble with his serve. Perhaps he couldn’t see beyond his strawberry blond hair. After the fifth game, ahead, 3-2, Becker sat down at the switch and trimmed his bangs. It didn’t work. Serving at 3-3, he failed to get even one of his first serves in. His second serve was a beauty, though, and he won that game, too.

Something odd happened in the third set, odder than even a haircut. Lendl saved five break points to go ahead, 2-1. The players eventually reached 6-6, and though the clouds had dispersed, night was now falling.

Lendl appeared to be going down here but then, you know the story--Raise High the Teutonic. When Becker muffed his volley into the net, leading, 6-5, the day was done. In time, Lendl went ahead, 10-8, to win the third set. The umpire, perhaps thinking of the Edberg comeback, sent the crowd home.

So they finish their match under the sun, although they share the women’s spotlight as well. Now only rain can prevent Edberg from learning of his opponent. But this tournament has only had slightly less rain than darkness.