Graf Has Substance, Sabatini a New Style : U.S. Open: Both reach final, but West German needs only 54 minutes. Argentine goes to net 92 times and comes away with three-set victory.

Steffi Graf heated up her forehand, rubbed out Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and rang up the cash register Friday at the U.S. Open, all in 54 minutes.

Graf sacked Sanchez Vicario, 6-1, 6-2, in a thoroughly intimidating performance that not only propelled her into today’s final against Gabriela Sabatini, but also into a higher tax bracket.

Graf couldn’t make money any faster without her own press. So far, she has made $29,560.81 an hour, or $581 a minute, including what she is guaranteed for playing in the final.

She is just about guaranteed a U.S. title, her third in a row. The forehand she has been slugging is as hot as the molten mustard they lace the hot dogs with at the concession stands.

Sanchez Vicario, an 18-year-old from Barcelona, was still chirpy afterward, managing a wry smile.

“I didn’t have any chance,” she said.

Mary Joe Fernandez had a nice-looking chance in her semifinal against Sabatini. But Fernandez, who led the first set, 4-1, 40-30, was caught in an avalanche of service breaks and fell, 7-5, 5-7, 6-3, in 2 hours 43 minutes.

Besides length, the match was also noteworthy for service breaks--13 in all and 12 in the first two sets--and Sabatini’s sudden interest in the net.

Normally, she gets close to the net only on changeovers, but she changed totally against Fernandez. Sabatini approached 92 times, won 56 points and even set up match point with a diving backhand volley that surprised even her.

“I saw the ball was in and I said, ‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ ” said Sabatini, who once again gave credit to her fighting spirit.

Will it be enough to beat Graf, who has an 18-3 record against Sabatini? Said Fernandez: “Anything’s possible.”

Last spring in Paris, Sanchez Vicario stalked Graf in the French Open final and beat her, bouncing balls off a slow clay surface.

But put Graf on a concrete playground and suddenly those forehands she hits don’t look as if they’re coming from a racket, but from a high-speed drill.

For all intents, the match was over swiftly. Graf took the first set in 25 minutes spanning three service breaks.

Sanchez, who missed her only break point chance in the first set, seemed to submit humbly to the superior player.

“I think that I am,” Graf said. “I couldn’t play much better.

“I put a lot of pace on the balls, and I went for the shots when I felt that I could really go for it, so I think that I was simply playing too fast for her today.”

Actually, Graf has been playing too fast for everybody else. Her matches have been shorter than her practices. In order, they have lasted 40 minutes, 60 minutes, 99 minutes, 53 minutes, 55 minutes and 54 minutes.

There is speculation that Graf is merely busy developing a prototype opponent’s watch: Wind it up and you lose 55 minutes later.

In any event, Graf has won more matches faster and has played than at any time since poor tennis and her father’s personal problems sidetracked her.

When news reports linked Peter Graf with a model who claimed he had fathered her child--the woman was later arrested and charged with extortion--Steffi’s results suffered.

She lost to Monica Seles in the final of the German Open in Hamburg, to Seles again in the French Open final and to Zina Garrison in the Wimbledon semifinals.

Suddenly, Graf’s grip on women’s tennis seemed to be slipping. And if losing weren’t bad enough, her forehand failed her.

Graf threatened to move from Bruhl, West Germany, to avoid unwanted scrutiny from the aggressive media, but she didn’t do it. Instead, she quit worrying.

“It was a tough time,” Graf said. “I just wanted to get it over. It was very difficult, so that is why playing like this and getting everything behind me and getting through all of it, that’s why it means a lot to me.”

Graf maintained that there was never anything technically wrong with her forehand.

“You just have to feel it,” she said. “I can’t lose my forehand. There’s no chance. It may be off for a few matches or a certain time, but when I feel good about it, I just have to hit--and go.”

Against Sanchez Vicario, it was more like hit and run.

Tennis Notes

South Africans Pieter Aldrich and Danie Visser won the men’s doubles title, 6-2, 7-6 (7-3), 6-2, over Paul Annacone and David Wheaton. Aldrich and Visser, who also won the Australian Open doubles title, were the second-seeded doubles team. In their toughest match, they were extended to five sets by the unseeded team of Brian Garrow and Sven Salumaa in the semifinals. But after the top-seeded team of Rick Leach and Jim Pugh was upset in the first round, Aldrich and Visser became favored. They got another break when Ken Flach and Robert Seguso were defaulted after Flach had been defaulted in his mixed doubles for walking off the court. “When we got the default over them, the draw was pretty open,” Aldrich said. “By then, all the remaining seeds had lost.”