Graf's firepower too much for Novotna

IT WAS A match that should have went down to the wire, but the weight of Wimbledon's expectation had proven to be too much of a burden for Jana Novotna long before she walked out on centre court for yesterday's quarter-final against Steffi Graf. One of the game's most talented players would have to have won this one as much with her head as with her racquet and, as it turned out, neither was up to the task at hand.

Under the guidance of Hana Mandlikova, Novotna developed one of the best all round games but, while she can return service, move to the net or pass on the move with the best of them, she is still outclassed where it all too often matters most, in the head and the heart.

Three years ago, leading Graf in the final, both made themselves scarce when it mattered and her agony was there for all of us to share as she lost to three in the third. Little had changed 12 months later when she picked up the first set in the quarter-final against Martina Navratilova, but managed just one more game in the rest of a humiliating afternoon. The upshot of the two defeats was that she received too generous a helping of the Wimbledon crowd's pity for them ever really to consider her their hero.

In fact, given her record here, she did very well to extend Graf in last year's event but it's hard to believe that the player with the game best suited to grass doesn't regularly wake up in a cold sweat after yet another nightmare about the centre court.

Yesterday she lived the nightmare out again for all to see. Perhaps she is the one player who would have been happier to suffer the sort of one-sided two-set defeat, inflicted upon her by the German world number one, than to have had the better of things only to display the kind of mental collapse that would give Greg Norman a good laugh.

This, of course, tends to remove the top seed from the equation a little too much. This was Graf at her very best, showing the sort of form that will surely bring grand slam title number 20 by the end of the week.

She must have expected a better workout from the world number six, though, rather than the fumbling, error-ridden display that the 27-year-old offered by way of resistance. With opposition like this there will be plenty more big pay days for the German.

If Graf had any doubts about the eventual outcome (and her 24 victories to three lead over Novotna in their meetings - it had been 4-0 on grass - would suggest not) they must have been completely dismissed by the end of the third game in which the Czech calmly surrendered her service for the first of four times during the match.

Novotna, in fairness, did fight her way back from 40-15 down to deuce in the next game by forcing Graf to make a couple of errors but, after throwing away three break points and then being lobbed and passed on the backhand to go 4-1 down, she might well have wished that she hadn't bothered.

With a service return that had proven so valuable in her previous four outings, these were the sort of openings that had to be capitalised upon. Although she did win the next break point that came her way, she trailed 5-1 by then, and the set was all but lost.

From there it quickly slipped away and although she managed another game, she lost 6-3. In the second set, her most notable achievement was saving two match points, the first game of which she won with a wonderful service return.

By that stage, maybe she had had enough of all the messing around, but this, the 17th game, was the first in which Graf consistently followed her service to the net and, having failed to pass her with an angled cross-court return on the next point, Novotna barely had the opportunity to move between her next return and a back-handed volley close to her body before the German sealed the match.

It had been no more than an hour's work for the top seed and although Graf said afterwards that "I don't really want to say she played badly. I think I just didn't give her a chance to find her own rhythm," she did concede that it had been "a lot easier" than she had expected.

Graf now plays Kimiko Date in tomorrow's semi-finals. Date is one of only two players to have beaten her this year, but having given something of a lesson in how to play on grass to Martina Hingis on Monday, the 27-year-old could be forgiven for not booking any exhibitions over the weekend.

The last time they met was in the Federation Cup in Japan and while Date has shown herself able to tailor her tactics mid-match to suit her opponent, the very fact that she had, once again, to reappraise her own game at a set down to Mary Pierce - a player who, while improving, is usually about as comfortable on grass as an elephant on ice - augurs poorly for the player ranked 13 in the world.

She has played well in her victories over Conchita Martinez and the Frenchwoman, though, and at least her ability to turn an opponent's power to her own advantage will stand to her against a Graf, who is clearly firing on all cylinders. Extending the rallies and waiting for the unforced errors to materialise, as she did in the latter two sets of yesterday's 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 win over Pierce, is probably the sort of plan that General Haig would have come up with had he been faced with this particular German's firepower.

In the other half of the draw, meanwhile, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario will take on Meredith McGrath for a place in the final after the doubles specialist upset ninth seed Mary Joe Fernandez.

The world number 27 had never beaten Fernandez, who came away an easy winner in Italy last year, but this time McGrath, who wields a hefty enough serve, never allowed the 1991 semi-finalist into the proceedings, winning 6-3, 6-1 in just over 50 minutes.

Sanchez Vicario also had a comfortable outing, beating Judith Wiesner of Austria to four and love despite failing to hold service on either of the first two attempts.

After that she fairly sprang into life, though, and having levelled things up to four games apiece she completely outplayed her opponent with a considered game played, for the most part, from the back of the court.