Graf’s Reaction to Slam Is Not Exactly Grand

What 19-year-old Steffi Graf of West Germany accomplished Saturday, winning the Grand Slam with her 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 victory over Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina in the U.S. Open, ranks with the top athletic accomplishments of this decade.

Her Grand Slam is right there with the U.S. Olympic hockey team beating the Soviet Union in 1980, Carl Lewis getting four Olympic gold medals in 1984 and the Lakers winning back-to-back NBA championships.

Those three events brought forth a reaction that was almost as memorable as the accomplishment itself. So how did Graf react to her epic accomplishment, when she became only the fifth person to win the Grand Slam, and the first since 1970?

What everyone got was a non-reaction. Graf barely clenched her fist, shook hands with Sabatini and walked over to her chair at courtside to towel off.

Moments later, she went to the other side of the court to greet her father, Peter, and her coach, Pavel Slozil. Graf started to walk away, but her father called her back, and she returned to the stands to acknowledge her mother, Heidi.

Anticlimax was the theme of the day. Maybe you can chalk it up to stoicism. Boris Becker showed some joy after winning Wimbledon at 17. Stefan Edberg sank to his knees at this year’s Wimbledon. Even Bjorn Borg emoted.

Graf’s iciness on the court was downright chilly. Edberg at Wimbledon looked bubbly by comparison.

Afterward, Graf said she didn’t know how she felt about the Grand Slam. However, she did have a sense of relief to get it over with, as if the Slam were a bothersome fly that had been following her all year.

“I don’t think you can expect me to give the right answer right now about it,” she said. “I’ve just finished the match. I need some time to think about it a little. . . . I’m very happy all the talk about the Grand Slam is over. That’s a nice relief. Now I’ve done it and there’s no more pressure on me. There’s nothing else you can tell me that I have to do.”

Well, actually, Steffi, there is one thing.

Can you do it again next year?

“I don’t know. We’ll see,” she said.

Graf joined Don Budge, Rod Laver, the late Maureen Connolly and Margaret Court as the only winners of the Slam. Those four, and now Graf, won the Slam by winning the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in the same calendar year. Graf lost only two sets in all four events.

For her part, Sabatini didn’t have much to say about the significant occasion. She said she played well in the second set and, well, not so well in the third.

“I think it gave me more motivation,” Sabatini said about being the last player to try to stop Graf’s quest for a Slam.

“I didn’t feel any pressure. I think she had pressure on her.”

It showed in the second set, especially. Graf started missing big with her powerful forehand, and Sabatini’s driving topspin off both sides kept Graf pinned behind the baseline. The key to the second set was at 1-1, when Graf had Sabatini down love-30 on her own serve, but Sabatini came back to hold. Graf had looked in control in the previous game after Sabatini blew three break-point opportunities.

Then, up 2-1, Sabatini used her momentum to break Graf at 15 in the very next game. They stayed on serve until the seventh game when Graf broke to cut the lead to 4-3. But Sabatini, playing strongly, responded with another service break and held to win it, 6-3.

“I was playing well technically in the first set,” Graf said. “I wasn’t giving her chances to go for winners. She started hitting some good shots in the second set, I wasn’t so tough. The third set, she got tired.”

What else is new?

The rap on Sabatini is that she wilts when the going gets tough in the third set. That’s why her three-set victory over Graf last spring at Amelia Island, Fla., was so surprising. However, Sabatini, spent from the effort, had nothing left against Martina Navratilova in the final there.

“I don’t understand why Sabatini keeps getting tired,” said Billie Jean King. “I mean, she’s 18. She has all the shots and she certainly has the game to bother Graf. I think she needs to get checked out. I feel sorry for Sabatini.”

There was some solace for the runner-up. She was the first female player from her country to reach a Grand Slam final. Moreover, Sabatini is the only person to beat Graf in 1988; in fact, she beat her twice.

Oh well, that cuts Graf’s record to 60-2 this year. Her winning streak is 34 as she heads to Seoul later this week for the Olympics.

Since Graf hasn’t had time to savor this Grand Slam, it isn’t obvious where she places the Olympics on the scale of priorities, either.

“Well, this tournament is over now,” she said. “It was wearing me down a little. I’m happy to go there, but maybe the timing isn’t the best, right after the U.S. Open.”

She won’t be worn out from celebrating. The Graf contingent planned to celebrate the Slam by hopping on a plane back home to West Germany on Saturday night.

And if Peter Graf has his way, he’ll probably talk about what she did wrong against Sabatini. In the midst of a group of reporters, he kept going back to how his daughter continuously played Sabatini’s better side, the backhand.

“I don’t know why she kept going backhand, backhand, backhand,” he said. “She needed to play the forehand as well as the backhand. Not always the backhand. . . . But this helps much, because she played not very good, but she still won.

“Even though she won the wrong way. Going to that backhand.”

There you have it.