After Long Layoff, Bunge Hits the Ground Winning

Not that long ago, in the days before Steffi Graf and Boris Becker, Bettina Bunge’s name stood for tennis in West Germany.

A perennial top-20 women’s player, Bunge rose as high as sixth in the world in the spring of 1983. That was before knee and ankle surgery knocked her off the tour and almost out of tennis.

Tuesday in the first round of the Great American Bank tennis tournament at the San Diego Tennis and Racquet Club, Bunge began her comeback after a 20-month absence from singles play with a 6-2, 6-0 victory over No. 5-seeded Lori McNeil of Houston.

“I was out so long, I was wondering if I could do it,” said Bunge, 26. “Playing a match was something strange, where before it was something I did all the time.”

The match lasted only 51 minutes and was the only upset on a day when everything else played to form, including another easy victory for Bunge’s top-ranked compatriot. Graf became the first player to reach the quarterfinals with a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Betsy Nagelsen of Kapalua Bay, Hawaii, in front of a night-time crowd of 4,359.

That brief glimpse of Graf was her last scheduled appearance until the early session Thursday, when she plays the winner of today’s second-round match between Isabelle Demongeot of France and No. 7-seeded Claudia Kohde-Kilsch of West Germany.

Graf’s match against Nagelsen, ranked 55th in the world, lasted 43 minutes--two minutes and two games longer than her first-round victory Monday over Rene Simpson of Toronto. She allowed Nagelsen only nine points off her serve and ran off the first game in 70 seconds.

Nagelsen did not hit a return service winner until the fourth game of the second set. And she made Graf’s task that much easier by double-faulting nine times.

But the real cheering among the West German contingent was saved for Bunge. It was her first singles match since November 1987 and marked the lastest phase of an oft-delayed comeback.

“To pull it off is great for her,” Graf said. “The result is incredible.”

Bunge’s troubles began in January 1988 when she injured her knee playing doubles in a tournament in Australia. She underwent surgery in July to correct bone spur and tendon damage. She returned to play circuit doubles a few months later but in November tore ligaments in her right foot in practice and underwent surgery again.

She decided the time was right to make her comeback in San Diego, but because she had not played for so long, she had no ranking and needed an injured-player rule to allow her a spot in the 32-player field.

Once in the tournament, Bunge said she could not have asked for a better opponent than McNeil.

“For me, maybe, she was an ideal match under the circumstances,” Bunge said. “She is kind of inconsistent. . . . Sometimes she can be very good, and sometimes she can make a lot of errors.”

There was little question as to which way McNeil played this time. The loss was the lastest setback for McNeil, whose ranking has dropped 15 spots to 24th in the past year. Last month she dropped out of the top 20 for the first time since 1986.

“I never was able to play the way I wanted,” McNeil said. “She was rushing me, and I was rushing myself. I never settled down.”

McNeil and Bunge agreed that the lopsidedness of the match prevented them from making a fair accessment on Bunge’s recovery.

“One match isn’t going to tell you yes or no,” Bunge said. “It will take take a period of tests. It would be naive to say, ‘OK. Yes. That’s it. No problem.’ It will be a long, long way.”

Allow Bunge her cautious approach. Her troublesome left knee continues to give her problems. She said a new tenderness has developed in the same tendon but higher on the knee than before.

“I am concerned about the knee,” Bunge said. “It doesn’t bother me in the match . . . But before the match, when you wake up or at night or you get up from the dinner table, it’s there.”

Bunge will play Jo Durie of Great Britain in the second round Thursday. Durie advanced with a 6-4, 6-2 victory over wild-card entry Rosie Casals of Sausalito.

Among those also advancing to the second round were No. 4-seeded Patty Fendick of Sacramento over qualifier Linda Harvey-Wild of Chicago, 6-4, 6-1; No. 6 Nathalie Tauziat of France over qualifier Ginger Helgeson of San Diego, 6-2, 7-6, and Gretchen Magers of San Diego over Pascale Paradis of France, 6-1, 7-5.

Magers will play 15-year-old Angelica Gavaldon of Coronado Thursday in the second round. Gavaldon, a two-time San Diego section champion from Our Lady of Peace High School, advanced Monday with a three-set victory over No. 8 Ros Fairbank of Rancho Bernardo.

Magers and her partner, Robin White of Del Mar, also advanced in the doubles, defeating Lea Antonopolis of Los Angeles and Barbara Gerken of Thousand Oaks, 6-1, 6-2.

Magers and White will play No. 1 Fendick and Jill Hetherington of Canada in the quarterfinals today.