Hard-Pressed Graf Beats 15-Year-Old

PARIS — Defending champion Steffi Graf, pushed to the limit by the tournament’s youngest player, outlasted 15-year-old Monica Seles 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 today to reach the French Open women’s final.

Seles, an unseeded Florida-based Yugoslav with smashing ground strokes on both her forehand and backhand, gave Graf her toughest match in a Grand Slam tournament for more than a year as she forced the West German into a stream of errors.

In the final Saturday, Graf will meet 17-year-old Arantxa Sanchez, the first Spanish woman ever to reach the championship match at Stade Roland Garros. Sanchez, the No. 6 seed, downed Mary Joe Fernandez of Miami--fourth-round conqueror of Gabriela Sabatini--6-2, 6-2.

Sanchez only had to keep the ball in play to make it to the final. Fernandez made a catalogue of elementary errors and hardly hit a winner as she was blown away in an unspectacular match that lasted one hour, 18 minutes.

By contrast, the Graf-Seles match was full of thrills.

Going for the lines on almost every point, Seles stopped Graf from getting into her usual attacking groove and stayed with the world’s No. 1 player until 3-3 in the final set.

Only in the last three games did Seles’ hopes of pulling off one of the greatest upsets in women’s tennis evaporate. She dropped her serve to go down 5-3 and Graf, relaxing for the first time, served out the match at love.

“I’m really satisfied,” said Seles, who was playing her first Grand Slam event and had eliminated two seeded players, Zina Garrison and Manuela Maleeva.

“It doesn’t matter I lost. I’m proud of myself. To tell the truth, all through the match I didn’t think I could win,” Seles said.

“Maybe just a little bit, when it was 2-1, 30-love in the third set, I thought I might have a little chance, but when I started to think about it, my hands started shaking.”

Seles did far better than that, becoming the first player since Sabatini in the final of the U.S. Open eight months ago to take a set off Graf in any of the world’s four major tournaments.

“I was playing pretty badly; I wasn’t scared of her,” Graf said. “Sometimes you have good days and bad days. Today was not my day at all.

Throughout the tournament, Seles had attracted more attention than any other woman player because of her age, colorful costumes, bubbly personality and devastating base-line game. The confrontation between the new young star and the world champion was one of the most eagerly awaited of the tournament.

Sanchez has met Graf in two semifinals this season already, at Amelia Island, Fla., and Hilton Head, N.C., winning a total of 11 games.

“I’ve got nothing to lose now,” said Sanchez, who has reached the semifinals of all eight clay court tournaments she has competed in this season. “I’m playing the No. 1 player in the world. I’ll just try to play my game.”