Tennis Roundup : Arias Finds His Old Form and Upsets Becker in Monte Carlo Open, 6-3, 6-3

Jimmy Arias, playing as he had as a teen-ager, upset top-seeded Boris Becker, 6-3, 6-3, Tuesday at Monte Carlo in the third round of the $513,000 Monte Carlo Open.

Arias, 22, a former teen-age prodigy whose world ranking fell from fifth to 53rd in three years, needed only 1 hour 19 minutes to disposed of the world’s second-ranked player.

Arias said he hit rock bottom when he and the United States team lost a Davis Cup tie to Paraguay in March. He took a week off and went to see Dr. Jim Loehr, a sports psychologist, in Sarasota, Fla.

“He showed me films of me when I was 17, 18, 19 years old and they showed I was having fun when I played--laughing and diving around the court,” Arias said. “When I saw how I was playing now I looked like I was dead.”

In other matches, fourth-seeded Mats Wilander of Sweden downed Jan Gunnarsson, also of Sweden, 6-3, 6-2, and Thomas Muster of Austria upset defending champion and eighth-seeded Joakim Nystrom of Sweden, 0-6, 6-3, 7-6.

Third-seeded Chris Evert routed Nathalie Herreman of France, 6-1, 6-1, in the opening round of a $150,000 Virginia Slims tournament at Houston.

In other matches, top-seeded Martina Navratilova beat Camille Benjamin, 6-2, 6-2; fourth-seeded Zina Garrison downed Halle Cioffe, 6-4, 7-5; fifth-seeded Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina trounced Amy Schwartz, 6-1, 6-1; and sixth-seeded Lori McNeil eliminated Pat Medrado of Brazil, 6-4, 6-4.