EDBERG WRITES FINAL CHAPTER : HIS WIMBLEDON SAGA ENDS IN 2ND ROUND.

Byline: Robin Finn The New York Times

There wasn't any sun to set on him, so Stefan Edberg, the last of the genuine touch volleyers, ended his Wimbledon career on a note of doom and gloom with a second-round loss Thursday night.

``It's not the end of the world,'' said a nonetheless discouraged Edberg. He had dreamed of a nobler parting from the Grand Slam tournament he loved enough, even before he reached three of its finals, to make his home in London.

But with tennis dominated now by barbaric shots rather than beautiful ones, it was the end of an era.

Huffing and puffing and improbably inept at the net, where the racket that worked like a wand for more than a decade was devoid of its magic, the 12th-seeded Edberg was put out to pasture by a fellow Swede who had never played the main event at Wimbledon before.

Mikael Tillstrom, unseeded and unsentimental, played with a go-for-broke abandon that the 30-year-old Edberg could not match, hence this 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5), 6-4 swan song for the expert at the hands of the neophyte.

``I'm playing my last, he's playing his first, and maybe he's taking over in my steps,'' Edberg said of the 58th-ranked Tillstrom. ``He's a tough guy, a very talented guy.

``I missed way too many first serves, and that was the problem,'' said Edberg, who also played a disastrous final game, in which a botched forehand volley sent Tillstrom to match point, and a feeble backhand return into the net sealed the upset.

Edberg's Wimbledon breakthrough came in 1988, when he won the championship at Boris Becker's expense. He relinquished the title to the powerful German in 1989. Then, in the 1990 final, Edberg defeated Becker with a glorious display of serve-and-volley artistry.

``I wasn't crying or anything like that,'' said Edberg, whom Tillstrom left alone on the court to bask in the standing ovation that the occasion demanded. ``Once you've been a champion here, I think you should leave like one.''

The last of Edberg's six Grand Slam titles came at the 1992 U.S. Open. Here at Wimbledon, his recent results had been discouraging. Second-round losses in 1994 and 1995 apparently set a sorry precedent for what happened Thursday evening on cozy Court 1, which, rendered as obsolete as Edberg's game, is in use for the final time this year.

Earlier Thursday on Center Court, Pete Sampras made sure that a measure of decorum prevailed at this year's upset-ridden tournament by doing unto Mark Philippoussis what the raw but occasionally ruthless Australian teen-ager did to him six months ago in a straight-sets demolition at the Australian Open.

But that was then, this was now, and this was Wimbledon.

``I think Pete was definitely determined for revenge, to let everyone know that maybe the last time I beat him it was a bit of a fluke,'' Philippoussis said after absorbing a 7-6 (7-4), 6-4, 6-4 lesson in grass-court etiquette.

``I just let my racket do the talking; you're not going to see any cartwheels out there,'' said Sampras, on target to become the first man to capture four consecutive Wimbledons since Bjorn Borg commenced a five-year siege 20 years ago.

Sampras was out-aced 28-15 by Philippoussis, who teases the radar gun with both serves. Thursday, the Australian banged out a 126-mph second-serve ace, but that was the challenger's only edge. When and where it counted most, in the first-set tiebreaker and on his break-point chances, Sampras was nearly flawless.

``There wasn't a whole lot of strategy out there today,'' Sampras said. ``It was just a matter of trying to get his serve back, and him trying to return my serve, and I just did that a tad better.''

Sampras pulled a backhand wide on his first set point of the match, as the 19-year-old served at 5-6 in the opening set. But the champion asserted himself in the tiebreaker and won going away. Sampras broke Philippoussis in the ninth game of the second set and in the third game of the third, but he never faced a break point himself.

``At the moment, I'm serving big, but I've got to learn how to play the points and the returns,'' the 6-foot-4-inch Philippoussis said. ``I think acing means nothing.''

While the women's defending champion, Steffi Graf, advanced 7-5, 6-3 against Nathalie Baudone of Italy, two more women from the middle of the seeded pack were eliminated.

Eighth-seeded Lindsay Davenport, a svelte 20 pounds lighter but sluggish on this surface, was upset by Latvia's Larisa Neiland 6-3, 6-2 in just 57 minutes.

``I missed a lot of first serves, which probably killed me more than anything,'' Davenport said.

Along with Davenport, 10th-seeded Magdalena Maleeva was ousted by a veteran with a dozen Wimbledons' worth of experience, 22nd-ranked Nathalie Tauziat of France. Maleeva's groundstrokes were unreliable and her motivation erratic in the course of the 7-6 (9-7), 3-6, 9-7 upset.

Graf's motivation wasn't erratic, but her sore left knee was, and her limping aroused speculation that she is more sore than she is letting on.

``I've been having enough injuries, and I've talked about them more than enough, and I don't feel like talking about them anymore; I live with them,'' snapped Graf, who next will face Nicole Arendt, of Princeton, N.J.

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

Photo: Stefan Edberg, competing in his last Wimbledonbefore retirement, lost in four sets.

Associated Press

Box: WIMBLEDON AT A GLANCE