WIMBLEDON : No Service Break, but Breaks Still Go Stich’s Way : Men’s semifinals: Edberg loses despite never losing a service game. Becker beats Wheaton in three sets for all-German final.

The tennis fortnight of 1991 may very well be remembered as the year the gods rained all over Wimbledon and dumped on Stefan Edberg.

It wasn’t so much that Edberg, the defending champion and No. 1-seeded player, lost to Michael Stich of Germany and missed out on a fourth consecutive Wimbledon final against Boris Becker. It was how he lost.

In a 4-6, 7-6 (7-5), 7-6 (7-5), 7-6 (7-2) semifinal defeat that was stunning, weird and probably unprecedented here, Edberg dropped the match without ever losing a game on his serve.

He stood at Centre Court, serving 120-m.p.h. bullets at Stich and returning similar offerings for 3 hours 8 minutes Friday, and lost on a total of three or four errant swings in three tiebreakers.

Even Becker, who has won at Wimbledon three times and who earned a chance for No. 4 Sunday by defeating David Wheaton in the other semifinal, 6-4, 7-6 (7-4), 7-5, expressed disbelief at what had happened to Edberg.

” . . . It doesn’t happen that you don’t lose a service and you go out a loser,” Becker said. “But it’s a Wimbledon semifinal. Strange things happen in a match like that.”

Strange things, indeed. After two sets, Edberg had lost a total of 10 points on his serve. In fact, until the fifth game of the third set, Stich had managed only once before to get two points in an Edberg service game. The two tall and lanky players, each like lethal weapons on the ultra-fast Centre Court grass surface that has turned mainly to dirt after two weeks of heavy play, simply stood and blasted away.

Edberg got a break, the only break of the match, with Stich serving at 2-2 of the first set. Twice Stich tried soft drop-volleys, twice Edberg ran them down and passed the sixth-seeded German, the second time for the break.

So that left all the interesting action for the tiebreakers, since the sight of two heavyweight bombers crushing fuzzy tennis balls at each other so skillfully that the other can barely tap them back lacks greatly in drama.

In the first tiebreaker, Edberg double-faulted twice, including at 4-5. He mis-hit a second serve so badly that, had the wind not intervened, it had a chance of bouncing off the red hair of Friday’s star of the Royal Box, the Duchess of York, better known as Fergie.

In the second tiebreaker, they were right on serve at 5-6 when Edberg hit a good, deep volley to Stich’s backhand and moved in closer to the net. Stich hit a medium-pace floater perhaps nine feet above the net, and the 6-foot-2 Edberg, seeing it was clearly in his range, jumped for it, took a big overhead swat--and missed. For a split-second, Edberg had taken his eye off the ball and, on the most crucial set point of the day, had fouled off Stich’s pitch like a .180 hitter at Bakersfield.

“I think the match changed a little bit in the third-set tiebreaker,” Edberg said. “I was up, 4-2, I think I had a second serve, I let one ball go that was in. Then I was up, 5-4, in the tiebreaker; he hit two second serves and I didn’t make one return, and then I missed that easy shot at 5-6. You can’t really afford that.”

Nor could he afford what happened in the third and final tiebreaker. Stich’s ticked the net and went over for a minibreak at 1-1, then went up, 5-1, when he returned Edberg’s serve low and dashed in to hit Edberg’s low scoop half-volley past the Swede on the left. Stich, who served eight aces Friday and 83 for the tournament, finished out the match with two booming serves that Edberg couldn’t handle.

The 6-foot-4 Stich, who has worked his way from a ranking in the 800s two years ago to his first Grand Slam final, has played exceptionally throughout. He also was well aware that his opponent had done the same thing.

“Stefan played nearly perfect serve-and-volley tennis today,” Stich said.

Perhaps that will be some consolation for Edberg, but probably not.

“Naturally, you feel some disappointment,” Edberg said, “but it really doesn’t hit you maybe until the evening, when you are going to go to bed. Maybe that’s when it really gets in your mind, and maybe you don’t sleep so well.”

A tired Becker probably slept fine Friday night.

“Really, the last three or four days were very, very tough for me,” Becker said. “Today, I couldn’t have played much longer, to tell you the truth.”

Becker, reaching the Wimbledon final for the sixth time in the last seven years, threw 13 aces at Wheaton, had a total of 44 service winners, and survived 10 service-break opportunities. The last real chance Wheaton had to get into the match was with Becker serving at 4-4 in the third set. He started 0-40, but Becker boomed his way back to deuce and, right then, all but finished his three-set rout of Wheaton.

And so, it turned out to be a landmark day for both Becker and Germany. Not only did his victory and Edberg’s loss boost Becker into the No. 1 spot in the world rankings, it marked the first all-German final here.

“After the match, after (Stich’s) win over Stefan,” Becker said, “we gave each other high-fives, to say let’s make this an all-German final.”

And then Becker went out and did just that.

“It’s not easy (to play Stich in the final) because we know each other so well,” Becker said. “We have played a lot together, warmed up and in practice, and he’s a person that I know really well. It’s much easier to play somebody you hate.”

So, will that mean Becker will lack his usual killer instinct Sunday?

“I think probably the Wimbledon final will bring that out,” he said.