La Quinta Tennis Tournament : Connors Loses His Temper but Wins the Match

Things were pretty hot inside the Stadium Court at the Pilot Pen tennis tournament Wednesday, and that doesn’t mean just the weather.

Jimmy Connors lost the first set to Marko Ostoja quicker than he lost his temper last week in Florida. Both players turned up the heat on several occasions and voiced disagreement on several calls.

A line judge was removed, Connors came back to win, and Ostoja, who comes from Split, Yugoslovia, did just that immediately after the final point.

Later, Ostoja proved that you don’t have to be a top 10 player to be brash. Or ranked in the top 100. Or the top 200.

Despite Connors’ 1-6, 6-4, 6-4 win in 2 hours 43 minutes in the second round at the La Quinta Hotel Tennis Club, Ostoja, the No. 216 player in the world, claimed the victory as his own. And he was about as pleased with his opponent as he was with the officials, saying that the way Connors had tried to distract him by talking across the net was “very sad because he is a champion.”

“I never got a break the whole match,” Ostoja said. “He started to provoke me, and I got bad calls from the start of the second set. . . . He was losing and he knows that if he wants to come back and win the game (match), he has to do something.

“But I’m going home happy because I know I accomplished something. Besides, he needs the money.”

For his part, Connors, although facing a possible suspension and fine of up to $20,000 for leaving the court in the fifth set against Ivan Lendl last week in Boca Raton, Fla., showed far more concern about some of the calls than about money. He claimed to be a victim, too.

“Don’t talk to me about bad calls because I had 15-40 in one game and got two of the worst calls I’ve ever seen,” he said.

He wasn’t terribly thrilled with his game, either.

“That’s probably the worst I’ve ever played and won,” he said. “He (Ostoja) just kept the ball in play. He wasn’t doing anything exceptional. I just couldn’t play very well.”

Connors’ plan was to keep the ball on Ostoja’s forehand at the end of the match, but neither player dominated play after the surprising first set. In fact, when Connors won the final three games of the final set, it was the only time they weren’t matching each other game for game. Games nearly 10 points long were not unusual down the line.

The first- and third-seeded players of the tournament also made their singles debuts Wednesday, with few surprises.

No. 1 Mats Wilander scored a 6-1, 6-1 win over 15-year-old Andre Agassi, who was playing in his first Nabisco Grand Prix event. The match took all of 45 minutes.

Boris Becker had little trouble with Mike Leach in winning, 6-3, 6-3, although Leach did have six aces.

“It was pretty hot out there, to say the least,” Becker said. “I played him before in London, and I know he has a very good serve. When his right shoulder gets warmed up, I know he can serve hard. I knew it would be a serve-and-volley match.”

Tournament Notes Today’s schedule on the main court: Boris Becker will play Jose Higueras at 10 a.m., followed by Mats Wilander against Aaron Krickstein, Jimmy Connors against Jaime Yzaga and a doubles match pitting Becker and Slobodan Zivojinovic against Rick Leach and Tim Pawsat, both from USC. . . . Connors didn’t seem too concerned with the possible suspension. “I’ll just go home and ride my horses,” he said. . . . In a rematch of last year’s title match, David Pate beat defending champion Larry Stefanki, 6-4, 6-0. . . . Johan Kriek, the No. 13 player in the world, was knocked out by 79th-ranked Michiel Schapers, 6-3, 6-2.