Wimbledon Weather a Wet Blanket

To quote Christopher Gorringe, chief executive of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, “Unfortunately our optimism has not been rewarded. Reluctantly, it has been decided to abandon play.”

In other words, it rained all morning, all afternoon and into the evening at Wimbledon on Tuesday. It rained a lot. There were puddles and mud deep enough to cover shoes and then everybody politely went home.

And this is only increasing anticipation for the attractive schedule that can’t seem to get played.

Tim Henman is still leading Jim Courier, two sets to one and 4-3 in the fourth set. Steffi Graf is still ahead of the anonymous qualifier from Belgium named Kim Clijsters, a teenager who has been 16 for only three weeks, 4-2 in the second set after winning the first set of their fourth-round match.

Alexandra Stevenson, 18, got to sing the Sandra Dee song from “Grease” on BBC television Tuesday, which should give you an idea what happens when a media outlet has to fill up a day of scheduled tennis programming when no tennis is being played.

Stevenson, the 18-year-old from San Diego who has announced here that she is giving up her tennis scholarship to UCLA to turn pro, and her journalist mother Samantha Stevenson, have caused some sensation with comments about “predatory lesbians” on the women’s tour, so perhaps it was better that Stevenson stick to singing bubble-gum tunes from a feel-good musical.

Stevenson, playing in her first Wimbledon, will someday, maybe even today, play unseeded American Lisa Raymond in the fourth round. Stevenson has been receiving praise for her supposedly singular one-handed backhand, but Raymond’s backhand is also hit with one hand and it can be deadly as well. Twice Raymond, 25, has been in the third set of a fourth-round Wimbledon match, and been up a service break--once against Jennifer Capriati and once against Gabriela Sabatini. Twice Raymond lost and she has never reached the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam event.

An usher on Court 1, where Venus Williams was supposed to play Anna Kournikova, was desperately hoping at 2 p.m. that the match would be played for she feared that if rained out, the Williams-Kournikova drama would be played out on another court today, where she couldn’t watch. The usher was correct. The schedule now has Williams, seeded sixth, and Kournikova, seeded 17th, on for noon on Court 18. This will be pounding tennis between teenagers who aren’t fond of each other.

Williams finds it bothersome that Kournikova, who has never won a tournament, is a crowd favorite more for her long blond hair and even longer tanned legs than for tennis achievements. Kournikova finds it bothersome to listen to Venus and her sister Serena speak often of how they consider themselves the best players in the world.

Because, for only the third time since 1992, an entire day of play was rained out, here is what is supposed to happen at noon today:

* Boris Becker, everybody’s sentimental favorite, meets second-seeded Patrick Rafter, every woman’s heartthrob, on Centre Court.

* Graf, also seeded No. 2 and also with plenty of sentimental fan support, should need about 10 minutes to finish off her match against Clijsters, since Graf leads, 6-2, 4-2.

* On Court 2, top-seeded and defending champion Pete Sampras will play a Canadian of limited singles accomplishments named Daniel Nestor.

Plenty of seats should available for that because everyone will be fighting to see Becker-Rafter, or Graf or Williams-Kournikova on Court 18, or Stevenson-Raymond on Court 5, or even eighth-seeded Todd Martin against No. 10 Goran Ivanisevic, Wimbledon’s tragic figure, the big-serving Croatian who was Andre Agassi’s foil in the 1992 final and Sampras’ in the 1998 final.

And as soon as Graf wipes out Clijsters on Court 1, one of Britain’s great hopes, Greg Rusedski, will play Mark Philippoussis. Now that Wimbledon has accepted what most other tournaments did a decade ago, that it’s fun to measure service speeds and show those speeds to the paying customers, it will be a real contest between the tour’s two biggest servers to break the speed equipment.

Rain also wiped out most of Monday’s play and so here’s a reminder--Newport Beach’s Lindsay Davenport was a lucky finisher Monday and is already safely into the quarterfinals where she will play defending champion Jana Novotna.

On the men’s side, Agassi and Gustavo Kuerten have that same advantageous situation. Both won Monday before the rain and are all set to play each other in the quarterfinals.

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Today’s Featured Matches

MEN

* Boris Becker, Germany, vs. Patrick Rafter (2), Australia

* Jim Courier vs. Tim Henman (6), Britain

* Greg Rusedski (9), Britain, vs. Mark Philippoussis (7), Australia

* Pete Sampras (1) vs. Daniel Nestor, Canada

* Cedric Pioline, France, vs. Karol Kucera (13), Slovakia

* Todd Martin (8) vs. Goran Ivanisevic (10), Croatia

****

WOMEN

* Venus Williams (6), vs. Anna Kournikova (17), Russia

* Kim Clijsters, Belgium, vs. Steffi Graf (2), Germany

* Nathalie Tauziat (8), France, vs. Dominique Van Roost (15), Belgium