Becker Serves Notice With Win Over Wilander

Boris Becker keeps improving, and his competitors on the professional tennis tour are watching him with their fingers crossed, wondering when it will end.

It will likely end where it usually ends for the 18-year-old West German--in the final of yet another tournament. Becker is headed there, or at least his momentum is carrying him to the final of the $500,000 Nabisco Masters. Becker beat third-seeded Mats Wilander, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, in a quarterfinal match Thursday night before 10,971 fans at Madison Square Garden.

It was the best match of the tournament, certainly the most crowd-pleasing. Wilander and Becker slugged it out from the base line, making for long points. The first point of the match lasted 1 minute 40 seconds. Neither Wilander nor Becker advanced past the service line.

The fact that Becker can dominate from the base line is a new and alarming bit of news to the tour. Just when players thought they had scouted Becker’s booming serve-and-volley style, he borrows a page from the Swedish playbook.

“He’s playing with a lot of confidence on the big points,” said Wilander, who lost to Becker for the fourth straight time. “He feels he will win them in any situation. He serves really well on the important points.

“I think he improved quite a lot after Wimbledon. It’s pretty tough to improve now, I think. He’s pretty good now. That’s enough. I hope he doesn’t improve any more.

“I think his volley is his weakest point. He moves and works very hard at the net. He reaches a lot of balls, but he does not put away too many volleys. But I hope he does not improve on that, because if he does that, I’m retiring.”

Wilander, who is only 21, was only joking about retiring. For now, anyway. But Becker’s game has improved since he won Wimbledon last summer.

The last time Wilander beat Becker was in the second round of the 1985 French Open, and Wilander went on to win the tournament. “In the French, he (Wilander) gave me a good tennis lesson,” Becker said. “Since then, I’ve learned a lot. In the last few months, I have been practicing very hard. I now know I can win from the base line.”

The match started with the slow cadence of a base-line duel. Both players have excellent ground strokes, but Wilander is more comfortable staying back.

Becker makes up with power what he lacks in precision on his strokes. Next to Ivan Lendl, Becker is said to hit the hardest of any player on the tour.

Wilander broke Becker’s serve in the first game of the match, then was broken by Becker in the sixth game.

In the 10th and final game of the first set, Becker broke Wilander again, and a light bulb, falling from high above the floor of the Garden, also broke.

Wilander served at 30-all, and Becker hit a forehand wide. Just after Becker hit the ball, there was a loud pop, as if a firecracker had exploded. Becker jumped up and away from where he was standing and pointed at the court with his racket.

How a large light bulb had worked loose from the ceiling is not known.

When play resumed, Becker took the game to deuce three times before winning the set. The second set saw a revival on Wilander’s part, and the withering of Becker’s serve. “His serve is his strong point,” Wilander said. “If he cannot serve well, you have a chance.”

Wilander began to return Becker’s serve with confidence, and he ran Becker around the court with well-placed shots, heavy with topspin. Wilander also made fewer mistakes: Becker had 30 unforced errors in the match to Wilander’s 17.

Wilander broke in the third game and staved off Becker, who had begun to move to the net, to win the second set, 6-4.

Becker picked up his serve in the third set, and that was enough of a difference to give him the match. Becker had 13 service aces, and there would have been more, except that Wilander’s athletic ability allowed him to get a racket on the ball as it came firing over the net.

Becker broke in the eighth game, which was the longest of the 2-hour 5-minute match. Wilander was stoic throughout the game, merely biting his lower lip as a sign of tension. Becker let out with a loud “Ja!” after he won the game.

Masters Notes In the only other singles match Thursday, Andres Gomez defeated Johan Kriek, 6-3, 6-2. . . . Boris Becker and his coach, Ion Tiriac, are close, even on the court. In the third set of his win over Mats Wilander, Becker was given a warning because the chair umpire noticed Tiriac coaching Becker from his courtside seat. Coaching is against the rules. Becker said later, “It was just the wrong moment. He (Tiriac) had been saying much more, but the umpire just didn’t see it. Our relationship is very close, we are always together. . . . On the court, we are very close, too. When I am playing well, I am looking at him. When I am playing bad, I am looking at him.”