Tennis Roundup : McEnroe, Connors Win, but It’s Not Easy

John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors both survived scares Friday to advance to the semifinals of the $315,000 Volvo Grand Prix tournament at Chicago.

Top-seeded McEnroe rebounded for a 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 victory over Paul Annacone, while Connors held off Brad Gilbert, 6-4, 4-6, 7-5.

In other matches, third-seeded Andres Gomez defeated seventh-seeded Tim Mayotte, 6-3, 3-6, 6-1, and eighth-seeded Scott Davis beat Terry Moor, 6-4, 6-4.

In today’s semifinals, McEnroe will meet Davis and Connors will play Gomez.

Annacone, ranked 60th in the world, gave McEnroe all he could handle Friday. Rushing the net on every point, the 22-year-old former University of Tennessee star broke McEnroe’s serve in the third game of the first set while holding his serve all five times.

He then broke McEnroe’s serve again in the first game of the second set. Leading 4-2, Annacone had two break points in the seventh game. But McEnroe held and then won the next three games to take the set, 6-4.

“He hit a couple of good serves,” Annacone said about the key seventh game. “The next game, my serve took the rest of the match off.”

At Monaco, Aaron Krickstein, a 17-year-old high school senior from Grosse Pointe, Mich., defeated Tomas Smid of Czechoslovakia, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, in the quarterfinals of the $325,000 Jacomo Monte Carlo Open.

Also reaching the semifinals while playing in swirling winds were Ivan Lendl of Czechoslovakia and two Swedes, Mats Wilander and defending champion Henrik Sundstrom.

No. 1-seeded Lendl defeated Italy’s Francesco Cancellotti, 6-2, 6-1; No. 2-seeded Wilander routed Czechoslovakia’s Libor Pimek, 6-3, 6-1, and Sundstrom beat West Germany’s Michael Westphal, 6-4, 6-2.

Carling Bassett of Canada defeated challenger Kathy Horvath, 7-6, 6-4, at Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and will join Chris Evert Lloyd, Pam Shriver and Hana Mandlikova in a four-player $275,000 Ford shootout for a $100,000 first prize, starting today.