You Work Hard, You Win, and What Does It Get You? Steffi

Welcome to Steffi’s Invitational Love-In and Tennis Bashing.

Hello, Bettina.

Your turn.

At 30 minutes past high noon today, there will be a showdown, to use the word loosely, in the center corral at the San Diego Tennis and Racquet Club. It’ll be a showdown only in the sense that the Gunfight at the OK Corral would have been a showdown if one side had .357 magnums and the other had squirt guns.

That’s the way it has gone this week in what is more formally known as the Great American Bank Tennis Classic.

Steffi Graf over Rene Simpson, 6-0, 6-0.

Steffi Graf over Betsy Nagelson, 6-1, 6-1.

Steffi Graf over Claudia Kohde-Kilsch, 6-0, 6-0.

Love, love, bash, bash, love, love.

What happened against Nagelson, Steffi? A step slow that day? Almost work up a sweat? Almost had to take a shower?

Who’s next in today’s semifinals?

Bettina Bunge, the one-person United Nations. Bunge, 26, was born in Switzerland, spent 14 years living in Peru, plays out of West Germany, graduated from high school in Florida and lives in Monte Carlo. She speaks English, German and Spanish . . . and she’s learning French.

Right now, however, she is tied to a trestle, and Steffi Graf is a Mid-day Express coming down the tracks. Anyone trying to beat Graf these days, not just Bettina, is like a catamaran going against an aircraft carrier or a mo-ped going against a tank. It ain’t a pretty sight.

Presumably, Great American has already converted the $40,000 first prize into Deutsch marks. If Graf, all of 20 years old, keeps going the way she’s been going, they’ll start printing the darn things with her picture on them.

About the only way she will lose here is if they make her play the doubles winners.

Bunge, coming off two years of struggles with knee and foot injuries, stepped into Graf’s path with a 2-6, 7-5, 6-4 victory over Ann Grossman in the quarterfinals Friday afternoon. The match lasted two hours and 15 minutes, or nine minutes longer than Graf’s first three matches combined.

Grossman, the farmer’s daughter from Ohio who lost to Stephanie Rehe in the final last year as a amateur, brought a bulldog temperament and a greyhound body to this match. She was intense to the point of talking to herself and so focused I doubt she would have noticed if a 747 flew over at 200 feet.

In contrast, Bunge seemed loose and maybe distracted. She smiled and made faces at the crowd and, at one point, stopped her serve to look up at a small plane circling overhead.

Looks must have been deceiving.

“As I was going into the match,” she said, “I was a little bit uptight. Suddenly, I was losing. I had won the first two matches so easily, I thought, ‘How could I be losing?’ I lost the first set, and I thought, ‘Geez, don’t get so uptight.’ ”

Needless to say, a thoughtless journalist would take that as a cue to ask her about today’s match with Graf.

“I’m having a beer now,” she said.

Toast!

But what about Saturday?

“It’s a different story to play somebody like Steffi,” she said. “She’s by far the best player in the world. I haven’t thought about that. I’m just enjoying this now. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

But how will she prepare?

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not going to do anything different just because I’m playing her. I’ll prepare like for anybody. I’ll try and not think that it’s her on the other side. I’ll try to keep a good positive attitude. I’m not going to think, ‘Geez, I hope I win a game.’ ”

Another West German, Kohde-Kilsch, did not win a game off her compatriot in a one-sided match Thursday that seemingly stunned Bunge.

“That was unbelievable,” she said. “Claudia and I have been practicing all week, and she’s a much better player than I am. That was incredible.”

Graf, of course, is no stranger to Bunge, not that they have met that often. Graf has a 4-0 advantage professionally, but Bunge doesn’t have to be reminded of that. She remembers the first time they met, at Wimbledon in 1984 when Graf was a 7-5, 6-3 winner in their closest match.

“I remember exactly,” Bunge said, “and I remember before that. I remember training camp in Germany when Claudia and I were the big stars. (Steffi) was 12 years old, a skinny girl. She was so good. God, she was already so good. When I first lost to her, she was 13 or 14. I wasn’t upset because I knew she was exceptional.”

Friday was a nice day for Bunge. She had reached the semifinals in her first tournament back as a singles player in oh-so-long. It was a moment to savor.

So what if Steffi Graf was next? Didn’t someone have to play her in the semifinals?

She leaned back in her chair . . . a winner’s chair.

“Maybe,” she smiled, “I’ll be sitting here tomorrow. Then I’d really need a few beers.”

Have ‘em anyway, Bettina. I’m sure Steffi would buy. If she were old enough.