There are different ways of getting into a Grand Slam tennis semifinal. Yesterday at the United States Open, the three-time champion Steffi Graf, the upset-minded Jana Novotna and Todd Martin, the solitary surviving American among the seeded men, explored them all.
Graf, the defending Open champion, got there by rote with a masterful 6-0, 6-2 dismissal of South Africa's Amanda Coetzer that took 55 minutes and left her plenty of time to escape from the courts, enjoy a meal of crab cakes and take in a movie.
Harassed by a bad back, Graf saw no reason to waste any time. This was her ninth consecutive Open quarterfinal, Coetzer was a rank newcomer to the round and the speedy pursuit of the inevitable was Graf's sole goal.
"I'm not really in a hurry, but I guess I'm playing well," said Graf, who tends to underplay her proficiency and overreact to her flaws, which were virtually invisible yesterday. Graf served four aces, converted each of the five break points she gained against the 11th-seeded Coetzer and saved both break points earned by Coetzer.
Novotna Ousts Pierce
Novotna, seeded seventh and faced with the necessary task of upsetting popular, powerful Mary Pierce -- fourth-seeded and still surfing the wave of respectability she rode to the French Open final -- resorted to trickery to reach her first Open semifinal in her eighth Open campaign.
The initially regal and increasingly rattled Pierce felt the baseline was her own personal domain and preferred that Novotna make a target of herself at the net, so imagine her surprise when Novotna not only hung back and traded groundstrokes, but struck them with greater accuracy.
Novotna had already imagined it while constructing her game plan, and yesterday her caginess achieved its desired result in a 6-4, 6-0 victory that sent Pierce back to the drawing board.
"I was surprised she stayed on the baseline as much as she did," said the 19-year-old Pierce, who would have had the Stadium Court crowd in her back pocket if her svelte tennis costume had the room.
"I thought she'd come in more, and she played tough, never gave me free points," said Pierce, who bristled at the notion that she had perhaps been outwitted. "During the match I guess I wasn't thinking very much; it was a mix of both things, of her playing really well and of me being a little impatient because she was getting so many balls back."
Pierce's overblown forehand was the 37th in a matchlong stream of unforced errors that helped to end her Open stint.
Novotna's dubious reward for her baseline chicanery was a semifinal assignment with Graf, the champion whose comeback from the dead zone in the third set of their 1993 Wimbledon final saddled her Czech challenger not only with a choker's label but with a hard loss to swallow or follow.
Keeping Strategy a Secret
Novotna, 3-20 against Graf, who has won their last nine confrontations, said she was keeping her semifinal strategy a secret.
"It's going to be different compared to the opponents I've had until now," she said. "Every match against Steffi is different."
While Graf has made peace with her bad back, the ninth-seeded Todd Martin has found an effective solution to the pain of his groin strain in a pair of supportive rubber undershorts. Yesterday, Martin became the only man to reach three 1994 Grand Slam semifinals when he took the underwhelming approach to outduel Germany's Bernd Karbacher.
Despite making more errors, hitting fewer winners and merely matching the 41st-ranked Karbacher's 11 aces, Martin nonetheless managed a 6-4, 7-6 (7-5), 4-6, 6-4 victory that prolonged his fifth and most successful Open run.
Martin's Success in Slams
But Martin later pronounced himself unimpressed with his trio of Grand Slam semifinals, the previous two of which led to defeats by Pete Sampras in the Australian Open final and Wimbledon's semifinal.
"I'd be impressed with myself if I'd done what Pete has done," said Martin, referring to the five Grand Slam titles owned by the ailing, and recently deposed, defending champion of this event.
Karbacher, too, counted himself among the unimpressed.
"He's a solid player, and of course anyone can win the tournament, but if you ask me for a prediction, I won't bet money on Todd Martin," Karbacher said.
MATCH POINTS
The palace coup of the WTA Tour threatened by the International Management Group on Tuesday was downgraded Wednesday from a hostile takeover of the tour by that agency and BILLIE JEAN KING to a strong suggestion that the present tour leadership should start implementing changes to revive the women's circuit. Those changes include the hiring of a chief executive officer to run the circuit (three candidates were re-interviewed yesterday), a restructuring of player commitment (the tour's inability to meet commitments has lately resulted in yearly fines of $300,000) and a shrinking of the overall operation and tournaments. I.M.G. currently owns six events, manages a half dozen more, and has offered its management services to the tour, which held yet another emergency board meeting yesterday. STEFFI GRAF, who is not an I.M.G. client, said she would not support an I.M.G.-sponsored tour. "I think there have been political moves in there that weren't right," Graf said. . . . The top-seeded women's doubles team of GIGI FERNANDEZ and NATALYA ZVEREVA left themselves just two matches short of a sweep of all four 1994 Grand Slam crowns by defeating KATRINA ADAMS and MANON BOLLEGRAF, 6-2, 6-2, in the quarterfinals. Fernandez and Zvereva were poised to complete a 1993 Grand Slam monopoly here last year only to be derailed in the semifinal round.
