Steffi Graf doesn't bother putting on a mask. She doesn't waste time with a jock facade, trying to make you think she is invulnerable and all is well. Because all isn't well. Her father is under house arrest in Germany for tax evasion, millions and millions of dollars worth. Her aching back won't even let her jog or lift weights to stay in shape. Her grandmother is very ill. Obsessive people, including German reporters, are camped outside her Manhattan apartment. And her primary rival has returned -- after an absence caused by a deranged fan of Graf's -- like the great goddess who saved tennis.

You don't watch a Graf match to see if she'll win; you watch wondering whether she'll have an emotional breakdown right there on the court. It would take every skycap at LaGuardia to cart her emotional baggage around. Monica Seles, she of the spare tire around the middle, joked last week that she'd like to be as thin as Graf. Not this thin. Graf looked drawn and worried from the time she lost the opening game of Tuesday's match at love on a double-fault, right through a lost first set and a stirring comeback that only a champion could mount.

Through much of Tuesday's first set, against the same Amanda Coetzer who eliminated her two weeks ago in the first round of the Canadian Open, Graf looked absolutely frightful. Twice, she lost her serve at love and the tiebreaker was 6-0 before Graf managed her only point. "I feel she definitely gives you a chance now to get into the games," Coetzer said.