Lendl to Play McEnroe; Lloyd to Meet Kohde-Kilsch

A furious Ivan Lendl overcame a disputed call on match point with two powerful serves to defeat Jimmy Connors, 6-0, 4-6, 6-4, Saturday in the semifinals of the $315,000 Volvo International tennis tournament at Stratton, Vt.

The victory set up a showdown for the $40,000 top prize today between the world’s two top-rated players as No. 1 John McEnroe ousted Robert Seguso, 6-2, 6-3, in the other semifinal.

At first, it appeared that Lendl was going to repeat a beating he handed Connors in the French Open earlier this year, when Connors managed to win only six games in three sets.

Connors won only eight points in the first set Saturday, but he began charging the net and worked his way back into the match.

In the third set, Lendl broke Connors to go ahead, 5-4. In the next game, at 40-15, Lendl hit a shot he thought was a winner for the match. It was called wide, and Lendl began screaming at the linesman and the umpire, holding up play for several minutes.

When Lendl calmed down, he hit another shot wide to go to deuce, but then closed out the match with a serve that Connors barely managed to get a racket on, followed by an ace.

Asked after the match about the call, Lendl would only say: “I wasn’t happy with that call on match point.”

Said Connors, who has now lost six straight matches to Lendl: “I let him off the hook. The tighter it gets, the tighter he gets. I didn’t give him a chance to wiggle,” in the third set.

McEnroe, who, like Connors, is trying to regain top form before the U.S. Open in two weeks, lost only 12 points in his nine service games.

“He never could pick up my serve,” McEnroe said of Seguso, a doubles specialist who made the singles semifinals for the first time in his three-year career.

“I always felt like I was serving well and that it could get me out of trouble.”

At Toronto, defending champion Chris Evert Lloyd rallied to defeat Hana Mandlikova of Czechoslovakia, 3-6, 6-2, 6-4, to advance to the $280,000 women’s Canadian Open final, where she will meet Claudia Kohde-Kilsch of West Germany.

Kohde-Kilsch, who pulled off the biggest upset of the tournament Friday by eliminating Martina Navratilova in the quarterfinals, defeated Helena Sukova of Czechoslovakia, 6-4, 6-4.

Kohde-Kilsch is 0-7 against Lloyd in her career. But last week, she won the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles tournament, and she says she has been inspired since countryman Boris Becker won at Wimbledon.

Navratilova’s loss means Lloyd will retain her No. 1 position on the Women’s Tennis Assn. computer and will be the No. 1-seeded player in the U.S. Open later this month.

Lloyd, however, squandered a 3-0 edge in the third set as Mandlikova battled back to 3-3. And she could have lost the match.

At 4-4, with Lloyd ahead, 30-15, Mandlikova hit a forehand volley cross-court that was called long.

Mandlikova said she thought the call was questionable. “I think if I had made the shot, I could have had a chance,” she said.

“She knows how to play me,” Lloyd said. “I felt she couldn’t get much better after the first set and I felt I could raise the level of my game.

“At 3-0 in the third set, I thought I had the match, but she dug herself out. At 3-3 in the third, it was anybody’s match.”