Edberg Takes His Final Bow

There wasn’t any sun to set on him, so Stefan Edberg, the last of the genuine touch volleyers, ended his Wimbledon career on a note of doom and gloom with a second-round loss Thursday night.

“It’s not the end of the world,” said a nonetheless discouraged Edberg. He had dreamed of a nobler parting from the Grand Slam tournament he loved enough, even before he reached three of its finals, to make his home in London.

But with tennis dominated now by barbaric shots rather than beautiful ones, it was the end of an era.

Huffing and puffing and improbably inept at the net, where the racquet that worked like a wand for more than a decade was devoid of its magic, the 12th-seeded Edberg was put out to pasture by a fellow Swede who had never played the main event at Wimbledon before.

Mikael Tillstrom, unseeded and unsentimental, played with a go-for-broke abandon that the 30-year-old Edberg could not match, hence this 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5), 6-4 swan song for the expert at the hands of the neophyte.

“I’m playing my last, he’s playing his first, and maybe he’s taking over in my steps,” Edberg said of the 58th-ranked Tillstrom. “He’s a tough guy, a very talented guy.

“I missed way too many first serves, and that was the problem,” said Edberg, who also played a disastrous final game, in which a botched forehand volley sent Tillstrom to match point, and a feeble backhand return into the net sealed the upset.

Edberg’s Wimbledon breakthrough came in 1988, when he won the championship at Boris Becker’s expense. He relinquished the title to the powerful German in 1989. Then, in the 1990 final, Edberg defeated Becker with a glorious display of serve-and-volley artistry. “I wasn’t crying or anything like that,” said Edberg, whom Tillstrom left alone on the court to bask in the standing ovation that the occasion demanded.

“Once you’ve been a champion here, I think you should leave like one.”

The last of Edberg’s six Grand Slam titles came at the 1992 U.S. Open.

Earlier Thursday on Center Court, Pete Sampras made sure that a measure of decorum prevailed at this year’s upset-ridden tournament by doing unto Mark Philippoussis what the raw but occasionally ruthless Australian teenager did to him six months ago in a straight-sets demolition at the Australian Open.

But that was then, this was now, and this was Wimbledon.

“I think Pete was definitely determined for revenge, to let everyone know that maybe the last time I beat him it was a bit of a fluke,” Philippoussis said after absorbing a 7-6 (7-4), 6-4, 6-4 lesson in grass-court etiquette.

Sampras was out-aced, 28-15, by Philippoussis, who teases the radar gun with both serves. Thursday, the Australian banged out a 126-mile-an-hour second-serve ace, but that was the challenger’s only edge.

While the women’s defending champion, Steffi Graf, advanced - albeit crabbily - 7-5, 6-3, against Nathalie Baudone of Italy - two more women from the middle of the seeded pack were eliminated.

Eighth-seeded Lindsay Davenport, 20 pounds lighter but still sluggish on this surface, was upset by Latvia’s Larisa Neiland, 6-3, 6-2, in just 57 minutes this morning.

Along with Davenport, 10th-seeded Magdalena Maleeva was ousted by a veteran with a dozen Wimbledons’ worth of experience, 22nd-ranked Nathalie Tauziat of France, 7-6 (9-7), 3-6, 9-7.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: AT A GLANCE Results: Men’s singles, second round: No. 1 Pete Sampras, No. 4 Goran Ivanisevic, No. 10 Michael Stich, No. 14 Marc Rosset and No. 16 Cedric Pioline all advanced. Women’s singles, second round: No. 1 Steffi Graf, No. 3 Conchita Martinez, No. 6 Jana Novotna, No. 12 Kimiko Date and No. 16 Martina Hingis all advanced. Today on Centre Court: Naoko Sawamatsu, Japan, vs. Arantxa Sanchez Vicario (4), Spain; Tim Henman, Britain, vs. Luke Milligan, Britain; Magnus Gustafsson, Sweden, vs. Wayne Ferreira (11), South Africa