Tennis Roundup : Sweden, West Germany Reach Davis Cup Final

Defending champion Sweden, led by French Open champion Mats Wilander, Saturday swept into the Davis Cup final for the third consecutive year, while Wimbledon champion Boris Becker led West Germany into the championship final for only the second time in history.

The Swedes and West Germans clinched their semifinals by taking the doubles and posting insurmountable 3-0 leads in the best-of-five series. Sweden eliminated Australia, while West Germany ousted Czechoslovakia.

“We played steady doubles except for a brief spell early in the third set,” Anders Jarryd said after he teamed with Stefan Edberg to stop Australians Mark Edmondson and John Fitzgerald, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4, on the clay courts of the Baltic Hall Arena in Malmo, Sweden.

It was Sweden’s first victory in five Davis Cup meetings with Australia, which has won the Davis Cup 25 times and only trails the United States (28) on the all-time list.

Sweden, a two-time Davis Cup champion, will play West Germany in the final Dec. 20-22 at either Munich or Dortmund, West Germany.

At Frankfurt, Becker and Andreas Maurer combined to top U.S. Open singles champion Ivan Lendl and his Czech teammate, Tomas Smid, 6-1, 7-5, 6-4, in front of a crowd of 10,000 at the Frankfurt Festhalle.

West Germany last reached the Davis Cup final in 1970, when it lost, 5-0, to the United States.

Top-seeded Martina Navratilova struggled to beat Terry Phelps, 6-1, 5-7, 6-3, in a quarterfinal match, then came back three hours later to score a 6-2, 6-1 semifinal victory over Peanut Louie in the Lynda Carter-Maybelline tournament at Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Navratilova will meet second-seeded Steffi Graf of West Germany, a 6-3, 7-6 winner over third-seeded Bonnie Gadusek, in today’s final of the $150,000 tournament.