Navratilova Gains Final at Eastbourne : Defending Champion Dispatches S. African, to Face Raffaella Reggi

EASTBOURNE, England â€”  Martina Navratilova, continuing her warm-up for Wimbledon, sailed through the semifinals of the $300,000 Eastbourne women’s grass-court tennis tournament today to reach a final against Italian Raffaella Reggi.

Navratilova, defending champion at Eastbourne’s Devonshire Park, enjoyed a surprisingly easy 6-3 6-2 victory over Ros Fairbank, the woman who took her to three sets in last year’s Wimbledon quarter-finals.

Top seed Navratilova, who had beaten the South African-born Fairbank seven times before, started in storming fashion, going two breaks up before her rival, recently married to an American, began to resist.

Reggi’s 6-4 6-2 defeat of unseeded American Gigi Fernandez was equally swift although the 25-year-old Fernandez put up a brief flutter of resistance at the last, saving one match point before hitting a forehand out on the second.

Fourteenth-seeded Reggi, who was given a third-round walkover when Chris Evert pulled out because of illness, was spurred on by a cluster of young Italian men who jumped to their feet and cheered noisily every time she won a point.

Also today, Boris Becker of West Germany reached the final of the Wirral International grass-court tennis tournament at Wirral, England, by beating American Dan Goldie 6-4, 7-6. Becker, a two-time Wimbledon champion, will play for the title Saturday against Peter Lundgren of Sweden, who defeated Carl-Uwe Steeb of West Germany 7-6, 6-3.

Other Distractions

At Eastbourne, Navratilova, who has dropped only one set in the six times she has beaten Reggi, had distractions of her own to cope with.

As she served for the first set, at 5-2, a telephone in the stand behind her started ringing. An American turned to the crowd and said: “If it’s for me, I’m not here.�

But despite the joking the incident unsettled Navratilova who dropped her serve and she had to break Fairbank again in the next game to take the set.

Navratilova, 32, admitted she had had last year’s meeting at Wimbledon in mind. “I wanted to avenge myself a bit--even though I won last year it was pretty dicey,� she said.