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John Crean

STEFFI Graf and Nick Faldo are so much alike. Their analogous qualities and foibles became starkly apparent when viewing the former at close quarters last week.

 A lot of the similarities are obvious. Both are fabulously wealthy and card-carrying superstars just a few titles away from legend status.

 Both are ranked number one in their sport and pretty ambivalent about the fact.

   It's not what they achieve it's the way they achieve it that is of paramount importance.

 Both are perfectionists who repeat time and time again that their main motivation is to rid every conceivable flaw from their game.

 Both are seemingly dispassionate, rarely smiling and seldom becoming agitated.

 Nevertheless, both are courteous to the sporting public although prickly towards the people who fan their glory, the press.

 Self is the ideal suffix when talking about both of them.

  Self-seeking, self-contained and self-denial are three hyphenated epithets that spring to mind.

 Self-seeking because both place personal fulfilment on a higher plain than the good of the sport at which they excel.

 Witness Graf's reluctance to talk about Monica Seles and her return to the game.

  ''Why do people always ask me that question,'' she said, deftly handing over to a non-plussed Arantxa Sanchez to give an answer.

 Those at the press conference were too polite to inform Graf why she keeps getting asked the question.

 The Seles of old was the only player who could take the court confidently feeling that she could down Graf.

 Since Seles has been out of the game Graf's relentless acquisition of tournaments has, with some marvellous exceptions like the Wimbledon final, made the women's game boring and predictable.

 Admittedly, it must be tedious for Graf to field the same questions over and over again but she has a responsibility, for the good of tennis, to do so.

  The women's tour enters 1994 without a sponsor after the withdrawal a year earlier than agreed by Kraft Foods.

   As world number one Graf must project the sport off the court as well as on it, even if that means talking about her nemesis.

 Self-contained because both Graf and Faldo have the type of mechanical game that is supremely effective yet lacking in flamboyance.

 It was educational to listen to Hong Kong coach Michael Walker's television commentary of the Graf-Sanchez final in the First Pacific Bank Challenge on Friday.

 Time and again he forecast correctly the shot repetitive Graf would execute.

   And the impish Charlie Charters almost made Graf smile when he commented how privileged Hong Kong had been to see her top spin backhand which Walker noted ''she uses only when she is 5-1 ahead''.

 Ditto Faldo. He can reel off the pars ad infinitum but you'll never see him getting up and down from the car park a la Seve Ballesteros.

 Self-denial because both of them continue the pursuit of excellence with admirable professionalism.

 During December, when the rest of humanity was busily making merry, Graf was in the gym working out five and a half hours a day.

  She is building up her body to make it more resistible to injury and in the process has lost so much weight that she looks positively emaciated.

   But that's a price she is obviously willing to pay in the search for her particularly Holy Grail, the perfect game.

 Faldo, too, spends more time on the practice area and less time socialising at the 19th hole than the majority of his fellow professionals.

   He gets his kicks from sipping sweat rather than champagne.

 There is little doubt that both Graf and Faldo will amass more cash and kudos for their selfdoms this year but whether tennis and golf will be the better for that is debatable.



Pursuit of perfection exposes many flaws