Seles, Graf Make It to French Final

Monica Seles and Steffi Graf reached the French Open final Thursday by reaching the pinnacles of their games when they most needed to.

In one of the better women’s matches of the tournament, Seles edged Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, after trailing, 4-2, in the third set of their semifinal at Roland Garros Stadium. Graf finally overcame Arantxa Sanchez Vicario on the red clay, 0-6, 6-2, 6-2.

Seles, seeded first, will face No. 2 Graf in Saturday’s final (NBC, noon, delayed) and it figures to be the kind of pressure-filled match they have become accustomed to.

Seles, 18, won her first French title in 1990, beating Graf in straight sets. She also won last year, and hopes to become the first woman to win three in a row since Hilde Sperling of Germany did from 1935-37.

Graf will be appearing in her 16th Grand Slam final. She has won 10 but has not won here since 1988, when she routed Natalia Zvereva of Belarus.

Like Seles, Graf has lost only once on clay this year.

“If Monica is in shape, she could win it,” said Sabatini, the woman who registered those clay-court victories over the finalists.

Seles is going for her fifth consecutive Grand Slam title in tournaments she has competed. She skipped Wimbledon last year because of an illness, losing her chance to win the four majors in one year.

After defeating Sanchez Vicario, Graf was asked if she would watch the Seles-Sabatini semifinal.

“No,” she said. “I think I’m out of here.”

She missed a tension-packed ending on Center Court that was emotionally draining for both women.

After six games in the third set, Seles held little hope of defending her title. She was holding on by a thread, feeling it slip away.

“She seemed tired,” said Sabatini, who defeated Seles for the Italian Open title last month.

A dazed Seles agreed. She had dropped 12 of 15 points and trailed, 4-2.

“I just said, ‘Here it goes. It’s the same thing as two weeks ago.’ ”

This time, though, she reacted. With sudden certainty, Seles exploded. Her ground strokes landed crisply, hitting corners and nicking lines. She broke Sabatini’s serve in the seventh game and the match was anyone’s.

“Suddenly she started hitting the ball hard and I just couldn’t do anything,” Sabatini said. “I was just defending myself.”

Sabatini, 22, did not simply give in. When Seles punched, Sabatini jabbed. When Seles ran, Sabatini ran with her. But she had no counter for cross-court winners that sailed past the line of defense.

“I don’t think she can play a whole match like that,” Sabatini said.

Seles had not played brilliantly in the second set, her shots falling on the wrong side of the line enough times to make her squeal.

Her troubles continued at the beginning of the third. After Sabatini held serve, Seles almost fell behind, 2-0. A double fault gave Sabatini a chance to break, but Seles saved the game.

The players settled into a baseline game with marathon rallies and the first to flinch was going to lose. Seles began showing signs of fatigue at the service line as her first serves failed her.

But just when Sabatini started thinking she might be headed to the final, Seles roared back. The crispness returned to her strokes and Seles closed quickly, leaving Sabatini grasping for answers.

After winning the French Open in 1987 and ‘88, Graf was upset in 1989 by Sanchez Vicario, of Barcelona. When they met again last year in the semifinals, Graf was defeated again.

She said those losses would have no bearing on their meeting here but some thought otherwise after the Spaniard opened with a 6-0 victory in the first set.

Graf has been saying for two weeks that her love of tennis has been revived, and it was never more apparent than Thursday. After the first-set loss, Graf, 22, began running around the court like an out-of-control pinball. Playing aggressively, she chased down the short shots, returned bullets on the deep shots.

She took a 4-0 lead in the second set, and finished easily to force a third set. Even when Sanchez Vicario took a 2-0 lead in the final set, her advantage seemed tenuous. Graf, focused and hungered, was simply too strong.

By the sixth game, Sanchez Vicario was serving to stay alive. She saved three break points as Graf pressured and pressured. Neither was willing to yield and it became more apparent that whoever won the game would win the match. Down to a break point, Sanchez Vicario became enmeshed in a risky rally that finally ended with Graf’s deep lob falling uncontested.

“I thought she was going to make a mistake, but finally the ball came to my side,” Sanchez Vicario said. “She was very, very lucky.”

Luck aside, this was a match Graf wanted to win. She pumped her fist after clean winners in the third set, and skipped when she won it.

“The way I kept fighting for it, I think it showed that I still . . . am very eager,” Graf said.

Graf said she started slowly because she was impatient, trying for winners instead of waiting for Sanchez Vicario to make mistakes. Her cadence was erratic, so she told herself, “OK, calm down.”

“I more or less told myself that I am a much better player, and just run down what you can,” she said.

Graf said she felt different from a year ago, when Sanchez Vicario played flawlessly here. Even when she was down a set, she said she knew she could rally.

Now, she will have to see how she feels Saturday in her fifth French Open final.

Tennis Notes

Lindsay Davenport, a 16-year-old from Palos Verdes, advanced to the semifinals of the junior girls’ tournament.