Tennis : Lendl and Evert Lloyd Advance at Boca Raton

The top seeded players at the $1.8 million Lipton International Players Championships rolled along Sunday with Ivan Lendl reaching the fourth round and Chris Evert Lloyd advancing to the quarterfinals.

Sweden’s Mats Wilander and Steffi Graf of West Germany, the No. 2 seeded players in their respective brackets, also moved on to the round of 16 with fourth-round victories on the hard courts at Boca West.

A night match between sixth-seeded Yannick Noah of France and Sweden’s Jan Gunnarsson was postponed because of rain. A fourth-round women’s single match between Australia’s Dianne Fromholtz Balestrat and Terry Phelps was also stopped, with Phelps leading 2-1 in the first set.

Lendl, playing with a sore right ring finger, struggled before eliminating Greg Holmes, 6-4, 7-6, whereas Lloyd’s performance was streaky during a 7-5, 6-2 win over Kathy Jordan.

Meanwhile, Wilander, the reigning French Open champion, and Graf cruised to their fourth-round victories. Wilander beat No. 15 Andres Gomez, 7-5, 6-4, and Graf ousted Alycia Moulton, 6-1, 6-4.

One seeded player fell as No. 4 Manuela Maleeva of Bulgaria was upset by No. 14 Barbara Potter, 6-3, 2-6, 7-5.

Among other winners were Czechoslovakia’s Milan Srejber, No. 9 Kathy Rinaldi and No. 12 Carling Bassett of Canada. Helena Sukova, the seventh-seeded player from Czechoslovakia, and No. 6 Zina Garrison were also victorious.

Wilander and Gomez was a battle of big serves and short, quick points--an oddity since the match pitted two clay court specialists against each other. And, when Wilander broke Gomez’s service in the sixth game, the Ecuadorian left-hander broke right back in the seventh.

They stayed on serve until the 12th game, when Gomez double-faulted to fall to love-30. He won the next two points to level the game at 30-30, but then Wilander hit a perfect lob and won the set when Gomez sailed a forehand long.

In the second set, neither player had trouble holding serve, the score never going to deuce, until the decisive 10th game. A passing shot by Wilander pulled him to deuce. He won the ad point on an unforced error, then closed out the match when Gomez was wide when he tried a down-the-line passing shot.

Lloyd, who has yet to lose a set in 1986, broke Jordan three times in the first set with the last one giving her a 6-5 advantage. A break in the seventh game of the second set gave her a commanding 5-2 lead.

“The first set could have gone either way. After I won it, she may have been a little disappointed and my confidence picked up,” Lloyd said.

“I was a different player in the second set, as usual in this tournament,” added Lloyd, who also started slowly in the previous rounds. “She was dangerous. She served well and I wasn’t returning the ball well in the first set.”

Jordan extended the world’s second-ranked woman to three match points before dropping the final game.

The triumph sends Lloyd into the quarterfinals, while Lendl advanced to a fourth-round meeting with Jimmy Arias.

Lendl, winner of 54 career singles titles and ranked No. 1 in the world, broke Holmes’ serve in the ninth game of each set, but needed a tie-breaker which he won 7-2 to finally put the No. 32 seed away.

Holmes, winless in two matches against Lendl, fought back from double break-point in the seventh game of the second set. He also fought off match point twice in the 10th game to break Lendl’s thunderous serve for the first time and pull even, 5-5.

Lendl held serve to force the decisive tiebreaker and cruised after winning the first three points.

Srejber continued his surprising success, beating 20th-seeded David Pate.

Coming off a third-round upset of Wimbledon champion Boris Becker of West Germany, Srejber, the tallest player on the tour at 6-feet 8-inches, bounced back from an opening set loss to win 3-6, 7-6, 6-4.

Rinaldi and Bassett advanced to the quarterfinals in the women’s bracket with fourth-round victories.

Rinaldi topped Anna Ivan, 6-3, 6-4, while the Bassett defeated Kate Gompert, 6-3, 6-1. Sukova knocked off No. 10 Catarina Lindqvist of Sweden, 6-1, 6-3, and Garrison dumped Yugoslavia’s Sabrina Goles, 6-1, 7-6.