Grand Prix Masters Tennis : 11 Players Primed to Stop McEnroe

Eleven of the world’s finest tennis players have gathered here for a most noble purpose--preventing this year’s Volvo Grand Prix Masters from becoming the Greater McEnroe Invitational.

Ivan Lendl, one of only three players to send John McEnroe off the tennis court a loser in 1984, has been dieting and conditioning in preparation for the event, and has lost 15 pounds in the last two months. “If I’m going to beat McEnroe, I felt I had to get faster, to serve-and-volley a little better,” Lendl said. “Hopefully, this will be enough.”

Henrik Sundstrom, another winner in Davis Cup play over McEnroe, is also here, along with some of the other Swedes who beat the supposedly unbeatable Americans last month at Goteborg, Sweden-- Mats Wilander and Anders Jarryd.

They’ve brought in Jimmy Connors, who may be 0 for 8 against Mac since mid-1983 but, with his fondness for center-stage tennis and a lack of fondness for McEnroe, is always capable of an upset.

McEnroe, however, remains unimpressed.

“I feel that if I play well, I’m not going to lose to anybody,” he said. “If I play my game, someone is going to have to play unbelievable tennis to beat me.”

And how is McEnroe’s game these days?

The prognosis around the holidays was shaky. A two-month layoff, a by-product of a three-week suspension and a wrist injury, had a Kryptonite-like effect on McEnroe’s invincible serve-and-volley attack, rendering him vulnerable to Sundstrom and the Swedes in the Davis Cup final. McEnroe lost his first Cup singles match of the year and his first Cup doubles match ever on consecutive days.

But since then, indications are that McEnroe is well on the way back. At last week’s big-name, big-bucks AT&T; Challenge of Champions exhibition event in Las Vegas, McEnroe swept through Jimmy Arias, Johan Kriek, Connors and Guillermo Vilas just about the way he swept through 1984.

McEnroe beat Vilas in the final to win the $200,000 first prize, yielding just five points in a near-perfect, 6-0 second set.

“The match against Vilas was a good starting point,” McEnroe said. “I’ve improved, technically, on my serves and I’m relatively healthy. I’m definitely more prepared for this than I was for Davis Cup.”

This, of course, is where it all began in ’84 for McEnroe. McEnroe won his first Masters title in five years last January by defeating Lendl in straight sets, setting the tone for a 78-3 year, including two victories in Grand Slam events, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, and winning streaks of 39, 20 and 19 matches.

Although it is being played during the opening days of 1985, the Masters, technically, is the culmination of the 1984 season. The 12 top point winners during the previous year get together at Madison Square Garden for six days to play for a $100,000 first prize and the year’s individual championship.

McEnroe and the other three seeded players--Connors, Lendl and Wilander--receive first-round byes while eight players will play preliminary matches to determine who will advance to the quarterfinals.

Tonight’s opening round will feature Sundstrom and Jarryd in an all-Swedish showdown, followed by Kriek vs. Aaron Krickstein. Wednesday, Joakim Nystrom will meet Vitas Gerulaitis and Eliot Teltscher will oppose Tomas Smid.

The winners will move into the quarterfinals, scheduled for Thursday and Friday. The semifinals will be held Saturday and the final Sunday at 9:30 a.m. (PST).

McEnroe should wind up there. And, he should win.