A Silent Seles Goes Out Like a Lamb : Women: Graf beats her non-grunting opponent, 6-2, 6-1, for her fourth championship in five years.

It was dry, it was wet. It was the longest of finals, it was the shortest of finals. It was Steffi Graf unloading a trainload of forehands past Monica Seles and collecting her fourth Wimbledon title.

It was a dreary, water-logged Saturday at the All England Club where Graf slugged her way past a dead-legged Seles, 6-2, 6-1, in 58 minutes of tennis and 4 hours 24 minutes of rain delays.

Graf would not be halted from winning her 11th Grand Slam tournament title, even by the three rain delays that transformed the women’s final into little more than a exercise in futility for Seles.

After winning at Australia and France, Seles had her hopes for a Grand Slam doused, first by the weather and then by Graf’s unerring shot-making.

“I just couldn’t find my timing, my rhythm,” Seles said. “She kept making all the shots.”

Seles answered the question of the day when she disappeared in the final without a sound. After enduring two weeks of critical newspaper stories and critical comments by fellow players about her grunting during matches, Seles lapsed into near-total silence.

Her usual slashing, judo-chop game also was missing, but Seles said her silence was not a factor.

“I don’t win my matches because of grunting, and I didn’t lose to Steffi today because I was not grunting,” Seles said.

“When I was in the locker room during the rain delay, I read all these letters, and in about 95% of them they say ‘Don’t listen to them, Monica, keep on grunting.’ So I don’t know which way to go now.

“Even if I do keep grunting, I just feel it shouldn’t have been such a big issue pointed out to me the whole two weeks.”

In silence and under leaden skies, Graf was in control from the opening minutes. If not for the rain, the match would have been over long before tea time.

Graf, who lost her No. 1 ranking to Seles in March of 1991, won her fourth Wimbledon title in five years, denied only in 1990 by Zina Garrison, who defeated her in the semifinals.

“It feels great to win the final in that kind of way,” Graf said. “This was definitely the best match I have played in a long, long time. It has a lot to do with believing in myself, I would say.”

Graf dominated from the start, but Seles clearly helped her along by contributing to the most lopsided women’s final since 1983, when Martina Navratilova brushed aside Andrea Jaeger, 6-0, 6-3.

Seles made 47 errors, put a little more than half of her first serves in play, double faulted twice and generally played like someone who couldn’t wait to get out of town.

She nearly acknowledged as much.

“I mean every day in the papers--headlines, gruntometers and everything, and then a lot of people making such a big fuss,” Seles said.

“I mean, in the whole Kraft tour, not one single player asked anything about it--not one single journalist or anything. So I really felt, you know, why is this tournament the one to be asked?

“So I felt, ‘Why is everybody picking on me?’ ”

The first rain delay occurred after Graf had closed out the first set with ease and taken a 1-0 lead in the second. After a 45-minute wait, they played five more minutes before another delay, then 14 more minutes before another break, this time with Graf leading, 4-1.

By then, Seles believed she had no chance.

“At that point, I think I felt like I could get into the match,” she said. “It was too tough. Being 4-1 down, I think it’s almost impossible to come back.”

Seles had never lost in six Grand Slam tournament finals and hadn’t been beaten in any Grand Slam event since she lost to Linda Ferrando during the third round of the 1990 U.S. Open.

Graf’s memory of Grand Slam tournament defeats doesn’t have to be nearly as good. She lost to Seles in last month’s French Open final, 6-2, 3-6, 10-8.

Graf is 6-3 against Seles and has won three of their last four meetings.

“It’s a great satisfaction to go out there and beat the No. 1 player the way that I did, that’s for sure,” Graf said.

Perhaps nearly as satisfying is the nearly $410,000 Graf won.

Additional Coverage

* TV TROUBLE

The rain at Wimbledon continues to plague NBC, which left the women’s final before its completion. C12

* TENNIS COLUMN

Despite losing to Andre Agassi during the semifinals, John McEnroe hasn’t ruled out a return to Wimbledon. C12