Lendl Gains Semifinals; Mayotte Takes His Loss Like a Gentleman

Let’s face it, nice guys do finish last. It’s happening here at the $500,000 Nabisco Masters tennis tournament. The Boy Scouts come out to play, shake hands and get taken apart on the court. They shake hands again, wave to the chair umpire and smile at the crowd.

Then they politely answer not-so-polite questions from the press. Some players spend their entire careers this way.

Tim Mayotte is one such nice guy. The British press a few years ago dubbed him “Gentleman Tim.”

Considering what the British press usually calls American tennis players, Mayotte should consider himself lucky. Or should he?

Has Mayotte spent his 25 years being a nice guy so he can be regularly trounced on the tennis court, as he was by Ivan Lendl in the quarterfinals Friday night at Madison Square Garden?

In the most lopsided match the two have ever played, Lendl won, 6-3, 6-3. That makes it 10-0, Lendl.

Mayotte takes losing pretty well, but then, it has become a habit with him. At least, against Lendl.

“It’s frustrating, sure,” Mayotte said. “But it’s the ultimate challenge. He’s the best player in the world. I know what it takes to win a match like this. It’s a little discouraging, but I’m looking forward to playing him again.”

Some people never learn. Lendl was his usual dominant self, dispatching Mayotte in 1 hour 22 minutes. Mayotte played well, in his estimation, but Lendl’s serve put too much pressure on him.

“I think I played well tonight,” Mayotte said. “The key is to try to get in on his second serve and take advantage of some inconsistent serving that he still seems to have.”

Everyone should have Lendl’s serving problems. He had six aces to Mayotte’s three.

It was Lendl who broke Mayotte’s serve in the seventh game of the match. With games at 3-all and Mayotte serving at 40-all, Lendl hit a deep lob that Mayotte lobbed back. Lendl slammed what looked like a sure winner. Mayotte scrambled into a courtside box, hit the ball behind his head, and ended up sitting smack in a chair.

Did it hurt? “No,” Mayotte said. “Fortunately that box wasn’t made too well. It was kind of like a Hollywood set.”

Despite his stuntman heroics, for which the crowd of 12,072 gave him a standing ovation, Mayotte lost his serve and the first set. Lendl seemed to be in control but said later he was wary of Mayotte, who has given him close games each time they have played.

“I was a little nervous throughout the match,” he said. “I had trouble settling down today. I didn’t want to let him get ahead, and I usually settle down, but today it was very difficult. The ball seemed to fly on me, and I missed easy shots.

“I was a little bit lucky because even though the result was 3 and 3, there were a lot of break points against me.”

Mayotte, actually, had five service break points and lost all of them.

The second set was much like the first, except there was one unusual happenstance, an emotional outburst by Mayotte that drew a warning from the umpire. With Lendl serving at deuce, Mayotte hit an easy lob out. It was one of his 15 unforced errors in the match.

Mayotte slammed his racket to the floor. Mild stuff by other standards, but good guys have a higher code to live by.

Lendl broke in the next game and in the final game of the match.

“While I was out there, I was excited about the way I played and about my future,” Mayotte said cheerily. “I was happy with the way I played, but Ivan is just playing extremely well.”

With that, Mayotte went off to collect his merit badge.

Masters Notes In the other quarterfinal Friday, Sweden’s Anders Jarryd eliminated Brad Gilbert, who had upset John McEnroe in a first-round match. Jarryd won, 6-1, 6-2, in 1 hour 14 minutes and will play Boris Becker in the semifinals today. It doesn’t bode well for the Swede. He has not beaten Becker in their three meetings. Ivan Lendl will play Andres Gomez, who has been the surprise of the tournament. The 25-year-old Ecuadorean was not originally entered in the tournament but was added at the last minute after Jimmy Connors withdrew with an illness. Gomez was in Washington, at a luncheon with the President of Ecuador and Secretary of State George Shultz when he was notified of the opening. His itinerary as he described it Tuesday night: “I get a call at 4 p.m. from the tournament director’s office that I was going to be playing Henri Leconte tonight. So I took the shuttle from Washington to New York. I got to the hotel around 7:30. I took a quick shower and headed for the court. I came in about 10 minutes before the third match finished. That’s what I was doing before the match. Don’t ask me what I was doing during the match, because I don’t remember.” Gomez defeated the 14th-seeded Leconte in the first round and defeated ninth-seeded Johan Kriek in the quarterfinals.