It’s Open and Closed Case for Connors

For the last time, the Nabisco Masters will be looked upon as the beginning and end of the tennis year. For Jimmy Connors, the six-day tournament is a last chance to resuscitate the worst slump of his career.

Despite the January date, the $500,000 Masters at Madison Square Garden, is a 1985 event, the culmination of the year-long, 70-tournament, world-wide Nabisco Grand Prix. But combatants and fans alike view it as the start of a new season.

That will change this year when the Men’s International Professional Tennis Council wraps up the 1986 season by holding the Masters again--in December.

Czechoslovakia’s Ivan Lendl is out to cement his hold on the No. 1 spot in the world rankings and prove that his victory over John McEnroe at the U.S. Open was no fluke. He also won nine other singles titles, more than any other player in 1985, and enters the Masters as the No. 1-seeded player.

McEnroe, who has won this prestigious indoor event the last two years, hopes to close out his 1985 season on a positive note. Although he won nine singles titles last year, he failed in his bid to capture a Grand Slam championship, and the Masters will be his last chance to win a major title in 1985.

“If I play well, I’ll feel comfortable playing against anyone indoors,” said McEnroe, who crushed Lendl in the title match here last year.

The tournament, however, could mean more to Connors than anyone else. The 33-year-old left-hander, playing in a record 11th Masters, has not won an official tournament since 1984.

The 1985 season marked the first time since Connors turned pro in 1972 that victory eluded him, although he did reach at least the semifinals in 12 events.

Among those entered in the Masters are four Swedes--French Open champion Mats Wilander, Australian Open winner Stefan Edberg, Anders Jarryd and Joakim Nystrom. Also competing is 18-year-old Boris Becker, who became the youngest, the first non-seeded player and the first German to capture the men’s singles title at Wimbledon.

Rounding out the field are Yannick Noah and Henri Leconte of France, Czechoslovakia’s Tomas Smid and Miloslav Mecir, and Americans Johan Kriek, Tim Mayotte, Brad Gilbert and Paul Annacone, with Scott Davis as the alternate.

The singles champion will earn $100,000, with $70,000 going to the runner-up.

The tournament also will feature the top eight doubles teams, based on total point accumulation from their year-long performances. Top-seeded this week will be the American Davis Cup doubles duo of Ken Flach and Robert Seguso.

The semifinals and final will be televised live on NBC Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 18 and 19, while ESPN, the predominantly sports cable network, will present live quarterfinal singles action on Thursday and Friday. All of the matches are best-of-five sets.

One streak that will definitely end is the domination of the doubles by McEnroe and Peter Fleming, who have won the Masters title the last seven years. McEnroe stopped playing doubles in 1985, and the two did not qualify for the Garden tournament.

Lendl has reached the final in each of the past five years, capturing the title in 1982 and 1983, while falling to McEnroe in 1981, 1984 and last year. Connors is seeking his second Masters crown, having won in 1978.

Making their Masters debut are Becker, Mayotte, Edberg, Gilbert, Annacone and Leconte.

McEnroe was almost unbeatable on the indoor carpet this past year, his favorite surface. But the key word is “almost.”

He was upset by Nystrom in the Buick WCT Finals at Dallas last April, but the New Yorker took a measure of revenge when he won the Stockholm Open, defeating, in succession, Peter Lundgren, Edberg and Jarryd.

Led by the quartet appearing at the Masters, 1985 did indeed have a decidedly Swedish tinge. Besides capturing two of the four Grand Slam tournaments, the Swedes won their second consecutive Davis Cup title, stopping the Becker-led West Germans in the final of the prestigious international team competition.

And, besides their berth in the singles, the teams of Jarryd-Edberg and Nystrom-Wilander have qualified for the doubles field here.

Wilander, however, was forced to withdraw last week from the tournament in Atlanta when he aggravated an arm injury, while Edberg pulled out of a tournament the week before because of illness.

However, the two Swedes faced each other in the Australian Open final last week. And yet both lost to the phenomenal Becker in Davis Cup play just before Christmas on an indoor surface.