September 10, 1995

There was no fairy-tale ending for Monica Seles, but a remarkable victory for Steffi Graf yesterday in the United States Open women's final. Despite an injured foot, a bad back and her father's imprisonment in Germany on tax-evasion charges, Graf defeated Seles, 7-6 (8-6), 0-6, 6-3, in Flushing Meadows, Queens. In the process, she ended the 11-match victory streak Seles had compiled since returning to tennis more than two years after being stabbed in the back by a fan of Graf's in April 1993. Seles had won two consecutive Opens before being attacked.

ON THEIR FIRST DAY of school, they hugged, squealed, touched each other's tans. They wore sundresses, shorts, T-shirts and running shoes without socks. In the auditorium, they passed notes, chewed gum and kept talking as the principal, Martin D. Mayerson, droned on about the new schedule, the meaning of the bells and why it was so unfair for them to come late or leave early. They groaned and tickled each other. School can be such fun before the pupils arrive. The teachers of Stephen A. Halsey Junior High School 157, Queens, will never again look as good this year as they did last Tuesday, their bodies relaxed and their passions renewed. For most, their public school teaching careers began as more of a mission than a job, and, despite what they describe as the demoralizing experience of working for the city, it is still a mission for many of them, at least inside the classroom. This year, the teachers of Halsey will be worrying about the mayor's budget cuts, a new United Federation of Teachers' contract, and the school board elections.

IT was always a one-way love affair. New York City adored Sigmund Freud. Freud hated New York City. He was here just once, in 1909, and he took in the usual sights: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Coney Island, Central Park and Chinatown. But as he left the States, he wrote to his sister: "I am very glad I am away from it, and even more that I don't have to live there."

HOURS before Senator Bob Packwood finally went to the Senate floor to offer a maudlin adieu to his colleagues and career, the chairman of the Ethics Committee took care to cast the occasion in terms of the day's operative cliche of Senate sensitivity. "There can be no doubt today that the Ethics Committee 'got it,' " Mitch McConnell insisted, offering as the Senate's bona fides the committee's 40-pound, 10-volume documentation of the sordid, grossly embarrassing sexual and official misconduct of Senator Packwood. The exhaustive work product seemed a grafting of the Warren Commission report and "The Diary of a Flea," a wedding of the ponderous to the pornographic in its painstaking tracking of the serial gropings and denials of Senator Packwood. Senator McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, patted the huge indictment as gingerly as an executioner's gurney as he uttered those definitive words of the Senate's day in washing its hands of Mr. Packwood. Remembering 1991 In behalf of his colleagues, he was trying to amend the Senate's great morality play of four years ago, rebutting the allegation that has haunted males in the Senate -- "they just don't get it" -- since the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. That painful showdown saw male Senators rendered variously glassy-eyed or combative before Anita Hill's accusations of sexual harassment.

THEY were both stabbed in the back, if you stop to think about it. Monica Seles was literally assaulted during a match while Steffi Graf was betrayed by the man she had trusted with her finances, her father. Both of these great and resourceful players carried the aura of survivors yesterday. Both women were so deserving of respect that the normally emotional crowd did not seem to know how to root. Neither player could really lose, just by being able to perform in public after all that has gone on behind their backs.