THE SEOUL GAMES / DAY 9 : Tennis : Italy’s Reggi Eliminates No. 2 Evert in 3 Sets

There will be a notable absence in the trophy case at Chris Evert’s house. Amid all that glitters from the hundreds of tennis tournaments she has won over the years, there will be no Olympic gold, silver or bronze.

A 22-year-old Italian named Raffaella Reggi took care of that here Sunday, when she knocked second-seeded Evert out of the Olympic tournament, 2-6, 6-4, 6-1.

It was a match that had many shaking their heads. Evert, who had met and beaten Reggi three times previously, looked sadly beatable.

In the third set, Evert had a break point for 2-0 and muffed it. At 1-1, she double-faulted twice at deuce. With Reggi serving at 4-1, Evert had two break points and failed to convert. And even at 5-1, where the Evert of old has so often picked herself off the ground and battled back, she moved out to a 40-15 lead, double-faulted to deuce and had two other game points on her serve before feebly netting two forehands to lose the match.

“At this point in my career, I’m afraid I’m going to have a few more bad days than I used to,” the 34-year-old Evert said. “I had a bad one today, and I certainly would have preferred that it not happen like this here.

“I really don’t have any excuses. I just played badly.

“It’s kind of too bad for me that the Olympics came so late in my career. I’m proud and happy with what I’ve done in my career, and I’ve had worse losses than today. It’s just that an Olympic medal would have been some nice icing on the cake.”

Reggi, certainly no newcomer to the women’s tennis tour--with a No. 19 ranking, 4 tour singles titles and a win in the U.S. Open mixed doubles in 1986 with Sergio Casal of Spain--already had an Olympic medal of sorts. She lost to Steffi Graf in the semifinals at Los Angeles in ‘84, when tennis was a demonstration sport. Semifinalists in the Olympics receive bronze medals.

Against Evert, she put an incredible amount of effort into each shot, playing as if each were her last.

“I took it point by point today,” Reggi said. “Against her, you just have to. Today, she made a lot of unforced errors, and that’s not like her.

“The thing I was most happy about was that I was patient.”

Evert said: “The way Raffe played today, there was no disgrace in losing. . . . She never let me in the match, and I just didn’t have it in me to dig deeper. Mentally, I just couldn’t get myself psyched up the way I need to when somebody is playing me like that.”

She had been the main hope to derail the streaking Steffi Graf in this tournament. Now, it looks as if Graf can advance through this bracket easily, just as she ran through her third-round opponent, Catherine Suire of France, 6-3, 6-0.

“I’m very disappointed,” Evert said. “I probably won’t stay around for the whole tournament now. I really never expected to lose this early.”

Olympic Tennis Notes

The day was not a total loss for U.S. women. Pam Shriver, seeded fourth, beat Katerina Maleeva of Bulgaria, 6-3, 3-6, 6-2. . . . Ken Flach and Robert Seguso, the top-seeded doubles team, were the only U.S. men to play Sunday, taking out the Hungarian team of Gabor Koeves and Laszlo Markovits, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4.