The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 19

1 "1 The Orlando Sentinel Queens keep hold of their court TT7 4 9 I Greg Norman opens defense of Canadian title with 67, C-7 Friday, July 5, 1985 Spirfe febimskess :z.ammmmTL&m ten By Peter Alfano NEW YORK TIMES it -c. a bit before beating Zina Garrison, 6-4, 7-6 (7-3), in the other semifinal. But fans were cautioned not to read too much into the scores. "I think Chris is playing her best tennis ever," Rinaldi said, "but I think the grass favors Martina." Lloyd has won three Wimbledon championships but lost all four times she has played Navratilova in the final. Navratilova has won the singles title here five times, the last three in succession.

She will be trying to become the first woman to win four in a row since Helen Wills Moody dominated Wimbledon from 1927 to 1930. The rivalry has been the talk of tennis and cast the other women as bit players on a worldwide stage. They have played 65 times since first meeting in 1973, Navratilova holding a 33-32 lead. They have played in seven countries and on four continents. "I've played Martina enough to know what to expect," Lloyd said, a sentiment shared by Nav-Please see TENNIS, C-7 Thursday at Wimbledon WOMEN'S SEMIFINALS Semifinals: Martina Navratilo-va (1) d.

Zina Garrison (8), 6-4, 7-6(7-3). Chris Evert Lloyd (1) d. Kathy Rinaldi (16), 6-2. 6-0. Today MEN'S SEMIFINALS Jimmy Connors (3) vs.

Kevin Curren (8). Anders Jarryd (5) vs. Boris Becker. Playtra' Medtngi in psrenthm WIMBLEDON, England Having dispensed with the formalities, Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert Lloyd now can get down to the business at hand. The early rounds at Wimbledon were like sparring sessions for these two friendly rivals, their progress measured by the length of the matches and number of games their opponents won.

They spent more time talking about each other than the other players combined, and Lloyd and Navratilova chose their words like diplomats do. Saturday, they will meet for the fifth time in the final at Wimbledon, just one month after Lloyd defeated Navratilova to win the French Open and regain the No. 1 ranking in the world. Lloyd won her dress rehearsal Thursday, handily defeating Kathy Rinaldi, 6-2, 6-0, in a semifinal match. Navratilova faced a sterner test and struggled UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Navratilova swings into a forehand and advances to the final.

400 WW Sacks bags Foireciracke -f)L I "1 77 s- i team shocks field Elliott finishes 2nd Brian Schmitz AUTO RACING I I I i i W'' I ByTimPovtak fi i A OF THE SENTINEL STAFF Stock-car wizards deserve Oscar for Firecracker 400 I I If AYTONA BEACH The wizards who run stock-car racing were hard-pressed Thursday not only to top last year's Firecracker 400 stock-car racing were hard-pressed Thursday desperate attempt to help Allison compete with Elliott, the experiment worked better than anyone imagined. It ranked as one of Daytona's all-time biggest surprises. With a load of luck and the genius of Gary Nelson, the team's operations manager, Sacks drove to a half-lap victory over second-place Elliott, who suffered from mechanical problems and had to pit for gas with eight laps left. At the time, he and Sacks were inches apart. It was the first race for the Gardner team and Sacks' first Grand National victory.

Because Sacks had lost radio contact with his makeshift pit crew and lost track of the other Please see RACE, C-4 DAYTONA BEACH An experimental, "trial and error" team, using unheralded driver Greg Sacks and a walk-on pit crew, upset heavily favored Bill Elliott and the rest of the stock-car racing establishment Thursday in the Firecracker 400. Innovation won this one. Sacks and the boys went along for the ride before a crowd of 85,000. Designed merely as a research and development project to help veteran Bobby Allison, the Gardner team has no sponsorship and a bizarre future. And now it has fame.

Created recently as an almost jr j' Sacks' victory amplifies Allison's racing problems By Don Coble SENTINEL CORRESPONDENT ing nowhere in a hurry. "It's no secret the past couple of years have been difficult," Yates said. "It was time to try new things. If Bobby didn't want to use our new ideas, we needed to find someone who would." Enter Sacks and a plan to use the New York driver as a test pilot. The idea was to try "unconven-tial" means to make ground against a racing program that has fallen far off the pace.

If something worked, then it would be used on Allison's car. If it didn't, at least Allison wouldn't have to sustain the setback. Please see SACKS, C-4 DAYTONA BEACH It officially was called research and development. But the hand engine-builder Robert Yates had in Greg Sacks' Firecracker 400 victory Thursday was more personal than mechanical. Yates, the engine builder for Bobby Allison during the past four seasons, had run afoul with his driver.

Both were split on ideas that would put their Buick in Victory Lane. Regardless of fault, nothing was working. They were a team head TOM BURTONSENTINEL A track official makes sure you recognize 400 winner Greg Sacks. story line but to restore gamesmanship to the sport. As usual NASCAR wound up in the winner's circle on both counts, right beside the Jiy's unlikely hero, Greg Sacks, a Yankee hired by one frustrated Southern car-owner two weeks ago to collect a bounty on hotshot Bill Elliott.

This fairy-tale Firecracker production certainly received an Oscar for originality. It somehow surpassed last year's 400, when geriatric legend Richard Petty won his 200th race, which was timely considering NASCAR was entertaining Ronald Reagan. Sack's shocker was just as opportune, for it rekindled the spirit on which this country and NAS-CAR's bank account was founded: competition. If there is anything that NASCAR dislikes more than a tax audit, it's a driver winning too much and eliminating the last-lap suspense. Elliott already had won half of the 14 races, most before fans had drained their first pint of Jack Daniels.

His monopoly of greasedom had sent frantic NASCAR rulesmakers running into laboratories devising methods to slow him down, all in the spirit of fair play, of course. Opposing crew chiefs joined the fight with NASCAR, burning the midnight pistons to come up with all sorts of crazy, off-the-wall schemes to overthrow the Dawsonville Domination. Thursday, much to the delight of NASCAR, one such crazy, off-the-wall scheme worked. Frustrated car-owner Bill Gardner hired a down-on-his-luck driver, played by Greg Sacks, to act as a sort of test pilot. Gardner was pulling out all the stops, or rather, starts.

His main man, superstar Bobby Allison, hadn't won since last May and was inhaling Elliott's exhaust like everybody else. So Gardner ordered his talented crew to subject another car to all kinds of unconventional tests in hopes of helping Allison gain ground on Elliott. What Gardner needed was a hungry, wild-eyed driver who didn't know enough to argue about the experimental car's handling, color or miles per gallon in the city. During the season the slumping but hard-headed Allison had rebuffed many of the team's suggestions, mostly because they weren't his. The idea in Gardner's and (that's stock-car-ese for research and development) program was for his team to transplant into Allison's car any startling discoveries from Sacks' first test.

It was some "test." The sound you might have heard was Allison kicking himself. Sacks not only left Allison in the dust, he derailed Elliott and won his first Grand National race by an Elliott-like 23 seconds. Riding an 0-34 streak in just his second full season on the circuit, Sacks was so overwhelmed by the events that he flirted with a wall "racing" Terry La-bonte on the final lap. Labonte was a lap behind at the time. No matter.

This was an embraceable story right out of Disney, complete with a pickup pit crew that didn't have a jack before this week and didn't exactly know how to use one. The jackman was a tight end recovering from a knee injury before his tryout with the New York Jets. The tire man was a bloke from New Zealand who had seen one race on TV. Another crewman was Gardner's son-in-law. "I was praying we didn't need a pit stop to win it," Gardner's manager, Gary Nelson, said.

Nelson could be seen yanking veteran crew members from Allison's pit in the waning moments. Nelson, Allison's former crew chief, was credited with shaping up this rag-tag bunch to pull off the upset over the Elliott's state-of-the-art engineering. That Sacks finds himself on Good Morning America this morning talking about his only victory and not in his daddy's New York produce warehouse sorting cantaloupes, is testimony to dogged determination and good old-fashioned luck. After blowing several engines at Talladega in May, Sacks was flat broke and ready to return to H. Sacks Sons.

But then Gardner entered the picture, looking for a Bill Elliott-buster. He found one in a test driver named Greg Sacks, who may be tested a few more times this season. ig rrim'--r Guidry stops Twins for his 9th in a row ISO irUhu ASSOCIATED PRESS BONNIE jO MOUNT SENTINEL A crash in Turn 1 took out two Contenders in. the Firecracker 400 Richard Petty (above) and Tim Richmond. Richmond scurried down the track and was not injured, but Petty was treated for some facial lacerations.

NEW YORK The way Ron Guidry has been pitching lately, a three-run lead is virtually insurmountable. That's what happened to the Minnesota Twins on Thursday night. The New York Yankees staked Guidry to a 3-0 lead in the first inning, and he held on for a six-hit, 3-2 victory, stretching his personal winning streak to nine consecutive decisions, longest in the American League this season. "We knew we had enough for 'Gator' in the first inning," said Ken Griffey, who snapped an 0-for-19 slump with a single, one of four Yankees hits in the opening inning. Guidry (10-3) retired the Twins in order over the first three innings, chalking up five of his eight strikeouts, matching his high for the season.

However, Kirby Puckett tripled on the first pitch of the fourth inning and scored on Gary Gaet-ti's grounder. One out later, Tom Brun-ansky lined his 18th home run of the season into the left-field seats. Top 5 finishers 1. Greg Sacks Chevrolet $45,350 2. Bill Elliott Ford 41900 3.

Darrell Waltrip Chevrolet 26.100 4. Ron Bouchard Buick 16,730 5. Kyle Petty Ford 15.570 The full story a Elliott has car problems C-4 Team Moto Cuzzl wins Revere C-4 Complete finish C-4 Box page C-5 i.