Tennis Roundup : McEnroe, Lendl to Play for $110,000 After Easy Wins

John McEnroe will play Ivan Lendl today for the $110,000 first prize in the $250,000 Suntory Cup tournament at Tokyo. The loser gets $70,000.

In Saturday’s opening-round matches, McEnroe defeated Yannick Noah of France, 6-4, 6-4, and Lendl beat Andres Gomez of Ecuador, 6-3, 6-4.

McEnroe is making his sixth appearance in the two-day tournament, in which four of the top men’s players in the world compete each year. McEnroe reached the final three times and lost to Lendl last year, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2.

McEnroe said he felt he “could have played better” in his semifinal match. “But where I needed to, I played well.”

No. 1-seeded Chris Evert Lloyd rallied for a 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 victory over Claudia Kohde-Kilsch to advance to the final of the Women’s Tennis Assn. Championship at Amelia Island, Fla.

She will meet Zina Garrison, who upset No. 2-seeded Hana Mandlikova, 7-5, 6-4, earlier in the day.

Kohde-Kilsch, seeded No. 3, was one point away from taking a 3-0 lead in the third set when Lloyd hit a lob that turned the match around. After winning the game with a volley, she took the next five games to earn a berth in the final.

“I’ve earned my money this week,” Lloyd said. “Some weeks we do, some weeks we don’t”

Said Kohde-Kilsch: “It was a great lob. You never feel in control of the match against Chris.”

Rain forced postponement of semifinal matches in the $200,000 River Oaks tournament at Houston. The semifinals were rescheduled for today, with the championship match to follow.

Top-seeded Mats Wilander of Sweden and unseeded Paul McNamee of Australia were tied at 1-1 in the first set after playing only six minutes when the match was stopped. Second-seeded Anders Jarryd of Sweden and Tim Mayotte play in the other semifinal.

Stefan Edberg and Jan Gunnarsson defeated Chile’s Hans Gildemeister and Ricardo Acuna, 6-1, 1-6, 6-3, 6-3, to give defending champion Sweden a 2-1 lead in Davis Cup play at Santiago, Chile.