In Case You Missed It, Graf Wins

The rain at Wimbledon has been a real pain for NBC.

When Steffi Graf finally put away Monica Seles in the women’s final Saturday, NBC wasn’t there.

Skipping the finish of the Wimbledon’s women’s final doesn’t quite rank up there with the Heidi Game, when NBC cut away from a 1968 NFL game between the New York Jets and Oakland Raiders to show the children’s movie, but it’s pretty bad.

Saturday’s NBC coverage was shown live in the East, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., but delayed two hours in the West, 8 a.m. to noon. Live in the West would have been 6 a.m. to 10 a.m.

NBC was still on the air with delayed coverage in the West when Graf and Seles resumed playing for the third and final time. It was 7:20 p.m. in England, 2:20 p.m. in New York and 11:20 a.m. here.

But because NBC had already turned over programming to its affiliates in the East, the entire country was out of luck. NBC had decided to show the finish on tape during today’s coverage, which begins at 7 a.m., PDT.

Saturday’s first rain delay came 45 minutes into NBC’s coverage, with Graf leading, 1-0, in the second set.

After 47 minutes, the players returned and got in five points in two minutes before the rain chased them away again.

After another 45-minute delay, they returned long enough for Graf to increase her lead to 4-1 in the second set before the rain came again.

This time they were out for nearly two hours, and when they came back, NBC was gone.

Since it took only two more games for Graf to finish off Seles, NBC, it seems, could have broken in and shown the final two games. Especially in the West, where NBC stations were still on the air with delayed Wimbledon coverage.

Maybe that is asking too much.

HBO did the right thing when it preempted programming Saturday from 4:15 to 7:30 p.m. to show the rain-delayed men’s semifinal matches.

But NBC did the wrong thing when, shortly after going on the air in the morning, it had Dick Enberg tell viewers that Andre Agassi and Goran Ivanisevic would be playing in today’s final.

As things turned out, because of the rain delays, NBC had time to show Agassi’s victory over John McEnroe. But Enberg, following orders, had already spoiled the suspense.

It wasn’t NBC’s only unforced error of the day.