Word: openings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Graf, 19, secured her place on the plaque with a style drawn more from Clausewitz than Connolly or Court. She dropped only two sets in the course of her conquest. In the first act, the Australian Open in January, she sent Evert down under 6-1, 7-6. In Paris in June, she pulverized Soviet Natalia Zvereva 6-0, 6-0, the only double bagel ever in a French Open singles final and the first in a grand-slam final since 1911. The walkover took all of 32 minutes on the soft, molasses-slow red clay. During the award ceremony...
...time the U.S. Open came around, scarcely anyone doubted that Graf would romp. Her task was made even easier when Navratilova exited prematurely in the quarterfinals after a fabulous seesawing bout, probably the fortnight's best, with Zina Garrison. It was a particularly melancholy end for Navratilova, who during 1983-84 won six consecutive majors and contends that she too has won the slam. Few, however, agree: the slam, like all classic stories, must adhere to certain unities of time and space, the calendar year being one of them...
...stomach flu and had to default. Then came the meeting with Sabatini, who had beaten Graf twice so far this year -- the only person to do so. But not this time. Graf was uneven -- "In the second set, I was not so tough" -- but finished overwhelmingly. When the Open was finally closed, Graf had lost just 23 games in six matches. That was all the more restful for Graf, who is off to Seoul to collect a gold medal in the newly reinstated Olympic event of tennis, a victory that would complete an even grander slam...
...Viper jet through a long, graceful arc in the late summer sky, his forefinger and thumb caressing the plane's stick as if it were a violin. The aircraft's needle nose pointed toward the runway below at the U.S. Navy's Fentress Air Field near Norfolk, Va. Engine open and screaming, gulping in the thick air, the Viper reached max speed of 264 ft. per sec. 20 ft. above the concrete and leveled out for its pass. A faint touch of aileron and the ship rolled on its back. The crowd gasped. Heads swung in unison...
There was romance, too, on the broad, open fields of Virginia. The story of flight was re-enacted with models -- correct down to the fabric, wires and rivets -- of those old, often ungainly aircraft that took the first pioneers aloft. Larry Kruse, a dean of Seward County Community College in Liberal, Kans., launched his replica of a 1911 Voisin into the fitful afternoon breezes. An almost perfect twelve grams of craftsmanship with a 13-in. wingspan, the plane is powered by a rubber-band motor turned 2,300 times. The Voisin bucked and churned, its tiny pusher propeller sending...