It Doesn’t Get Easier but Graf Still Reigns

As if her life isn’t complicated enough at the end of a grueling year that saw her personal life strewn across court documents and her physical condition best described as frail, Steffi Graf now has a teenager barely out of braces crawling up her back.

It took all of Graf’s resources to rid herself of the pesky 16-year-old Martina Hingis in a thrilling, creative and--to the players--painful five-set final at the Chase Championships, the WTA Tour’s season-ending championships Sunday afternoon at Madison Square Garden.

Graf won, 6-3, 4-6, 6-0, 4-6, 6-0, in a match that took 2 hours 29 minutes and ensured that Graf will end the year ranked No. 1. Hingis, whose season can be charted as one long rise, will finish at No. 4.

Both players experienced physical problems during the match, especially Hingis, who would have been expected to weather a five-set match better than Graf, 27. As usual, Graf managed to mask her problems during the match.

Afterward, they were apparent. Graf looked pale and wrung out, as much from the taxing season as Sunday’s tiring match. A chronically painful back and damaged left knee have prevented her from training at anything like her former levels. Still, rather than gain weight through inactivity, Graf has lost weight through stress. If not for the remnants of her superb conditioning, Graf would not look much like a professional athlete.

“It’s been a really, really long year for me,” Graf said.

It says much about the state of Graf’s life that the best thing that has happened to her this year is that her father was released from prison.

Asked to cite a wish list for 1997, Graf sighed and looked away.

“No. 1, health,” she said finally. “I mean, that’s really something that I’m deeply disturbed by, that I’m having so many problems lately. I really need to find a way to get better and to feel better physically. So that’s absolutely the top priority. Second . . . that life in general gets a little bit easier.”

Hingis’ life has little of Graf’s complications. She frets that she doesn’t spend enough time riding her beloved horse. That’s it.

Hingis, who for a week has been competing in violation of New York’s curfew laws, is one of the tour’s hottest players, having won 24 of her 28 matches since the Olympic Games. The Swiss teenager was well suited to play Graf: she feeds off Graf’s power and has the varied game to stand up to Graf.

Despite her age, she’s rarely intimidated on court. After Graf won the first set easily, Hingis took advantage of Graf’s sloppy play to win the second. Graf served her way out of trouble in the third set but got deeply into it in the fourth.

Both players had a lapse. The fourth set brought a cavalcade of unforced errors, either brought on by fatigue or brief inattention.

Hingis fashioned a 5-1 lead but was broken as she was serving for the set. During the changeover at 5-2 both players retreated to their chairs and applied ice packs to their left legs--Graf because of a knee problem and Hingis because of muscle cramps.

Hingis had a set point on Graf’s serve in the next game but Graf held. Hingis gingerly strode to the baseline to serve in the next game, flexed her knee tentatively and then plopped to the floor to stretch.

As Hingis’ stretch session went beyond the 20 seconds allotted for serving, chair umpire Jane Harvey announced a code violation warning for delay.

The pronouncement was roundly booed by the crowd of 15,256 while Graf, who had her own physical problems, stood waiting. After she got up, it was apparent that Hingis was unable to push off her left leg while serving and Graf broke serve with little resistance. Hingis was still ahead, 5-4, but her prospects were growing worse.

Graf pushed the pace in the fifth set and ran Hingis around the court, chasing vainly after balls she couldn’t reach.