Picture These Women’s Semifinals : Wimbledon: Matchups of Seles-Navratilova and Sabatini-Graf provide plenty of questions.

Weather permitting as always, it’s time for the women’s semifinals at Wimbledon, where the subplots are as thick as the clouds.

--Can Martina Navratilova win a 10th title at age 35?

“Should Van Gogh stop painting at a certain age?” Navratilova said.

--Can top-seeded Monica Seles stop grunting but still be able to beat fourth-seeded Navratilova and reach her first Wimbledon final?

“As soon as we come to a close match, I get back to my old ways,” Seles said.

--Can second-seeded Steffi Graf keep from swinging out of her shoes when she sees Gabriela Sabatini’s slow-ball second serves coming at her?

“I think that would be really important,” Graf said.

--Can third-seeded Sabatini find an easier finish to her match with Graf than she had against Jennifer Capriati? And what kind of finish was that?

“It was good,” Sabatini said.

The top four seeded women’s players are in the semifinals of a Grand Slam event for the first time since four years ago at Wimbledon when Graf, Navratilova, Chris Evert and Pam Shriver made it.

Sabatini was the last of this year’s crop to reach the semifinals when she beat Capriati in two minutes in a quarterfinal held over from Tuesday because of darkness.

Play resumed with Sabatini serving at 5-4. She won four consecutive points and walked off the court with a 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 victory.

Capriati, who lost to Sabatini in the semifinals at Wimbledon a year ago, experienced the same result a round earlier this time. She had complained to referee Alan Mills about the lack of light just before 9 p.m. Tuesday, and Mills postponed the match with Sabatini needing one game to win.

As it turned out, Sabatini didn’t need much time and Capriati said the whole thing gave her a “kind of weird” feeling.

Capriati summed it up: “You are out there, it is four points, you get off the court and it is just like . . . it is a real bummer.”

Although Graf leads her series with Sabatini, 21-11, Sabatini has beaten Graf seven times in their last eight meetings. Seles leads Navratilova, 6-5, in their series and has won six of the last eight, but Navratilova clearly has the edge in experience--her 14 Wimbledon semifinals to Seles’ none.

“What have I to be afraid of?” Navratilova said. “It’s not like you’re going to get your head knocked off. She hits a ball. What’s the worst thing that can happen to me?”

Uh, losing?

“Some people are burned out at 25,” Navratilova said. “I’m alive at 35. You know, age is a state of mind, and I’m defying it as well as I possibly can.”