Lendl Wins but Is Still Struggling

With the battle for the Wimbledon men’s singles title now wide open, two of the pre-tournament favorites, Ivan Lendl and Tim Mayotte, struggled Saturday before moving into the next round.

The upset of two-time defending champion and overwhelming favorite Boris Becker by Australian Peter Doohan on Friday created a new mood at the All England Club.

“Anybody can win now. It’s an open tournament,” said No. 4-seeded Stefan Edberg of Sweden, who moved into the fourth round with a 7-6, 6-2, 6-2 victory over Matt Anger.

Lendl, the world’s No. 1 player who is seeded No. 2 at Wimbledon, needed four sets to beat 21-year-old Richey Reneberg in a third-round match. Reneberg, playing in only his second tournament as a professional, lost, 6-4, 6-7, 6-3, 7-6.

Mayotte, seeded No. 10, was extended even further, coming from behind in a second-round match to defeat Tim Wilkison, 6-3, 4-6, 6-7, 6-2, 6-4.

Meanwhile, Soviet qualifier Alexander Volkov, ranked 503rd in the world, upset No. 12-seeded Brad Gilbert, 7-6, 0-6, 6-3, 6-4, and Jakob Hlasek of Switzerland eliminated No. 13 Joakim Nystrom of Sweden, 5-7, 6-3, 6-0, 7-6.

In women’s singles, No. 2 Steffi Graf of West Germany routed Laura Gildemeister of Peru, 6-2, 6-1. In an upset, No. 13 Barbara Potter was beaten by 15-year-old Mary Joe Fernandez, 6-0, 6-1.

The 18-year-old Graf raced past her Peruvian opponent in 50 minutes, although she dropped more games against Gildemeister than she had in her first two matches combined.

Gildemeister held in the fourth and sixth games of the first set, both times from deuce, and in the second game of the final set before Graf took the final five games.

No. 9 Henri Leconte of France, who downed Gilad Bloom of Israel, 6-3, 7-6, 7-5, said Becker’s demise was a shock to all of the players.

“Nobody in the locker room is talking about Boris’ defeat,” Leconte said. “I think it was such a big surprise that no one’s talking about it. . . . All the players left in now can win.”

The 25 remaining men include just one former champion, Jimmy Connors, winner in 1974 and 1982.

Other seeded men to advance on a partly cloudy day were No. 8 Andres Gomez of Ecuador and No. 11 Pat Cash of Australia. Gomez defeated Ken Flach, 6-4, 6-3, 3-6, 7-5. Cash beat Paul McNamee, 7-5, 6-4, 6-2.

Advancing with Graf to the women’s fourth round were No. 4 Helena Sukova, No. 6 Gabriela Sabatini, No. 8 Claudia Kohde-Kilsch, No. 15 Raffaella Reggi and No. 16 Sylvia Hanika.

After winning with a struggle for the third consecutive match, Lendl said the grass courts were the culprit for both his performance and the wide-open tournament.

“It (Becker’s loss) is just another thing that happens on grass because grass is such an equalizer,” Lendl said. “On a bad day, you can lose to anyone.

“For me, when something is going wrong, I have no alternative. On clay I could rush the net or hit the ball harder. There is no such thing on grass. When things don’t go well on grass, it is extremely hard to change anything.”

Saturday, Lendl just changed the direction his match was going. He never lost a service game, Reneberg winning the second set in a tiebreaker, 7-5. And he blasted 18 aces and 34 service winners in overpowering his opponent.

So far, Lendl has played two four-set matches and one five-setter in reaching the fourth round.

“I like easy matches and would obviously like to win in straight sets, but it is not by my choice that I play such tough matches,” he said. “But they make me mentally tough for the next time it happens.

“Sometimes when you have easy matches and are confident like Boris was, you are not ready for when you get into trouble.”

Reneberg, the top-ranked player in college tennis this year while at Southern Methodist University, matched Lendl stroke for stroke off the ground. He couldn’t handle the powerful serving, especially in the fourth-set tiebreaker, which Lendl won, 7-0. But he impressed the winner.

“I don’t want to go out there and play Reneberg again right now,” Lendl said.

Mayotte, who has produced some of the best tennis of his career at Wimbledon, needed some luck to get past Wilkison into the third round.

“It was just a question of attrition out there,” Mayotte said. “I was obviously struggling . . . and I just tried to hold together and hope I could piece together a break in the fifth set.”

He did, in the second game, on his way to a 3-0 lead. But he lost his serve in the fifth game, double-faulting at break point.

In the next game, the zipper on Wilkison’s shorts broke. He ran off the court and changed, then returned, waving the old pair of pants above his head to the delight of the Centre Court crowd and his opponent.

“It was a great moment,” Mayotte said. “The pressure and tension in the game is tremendous, but there are moments to be cherished.”

Wilkison won the game to pull even. But he double-faulted twice in the 10th game, the second time at match point.

“I was trying to win a point on my second serve,” Wilkison said. “I guess that wasn’t too smart, as it turned out.”

Volkov, a hard-hitting 20-year-old left-hander, advanced to the fourth round in his first Grand Slam tournament. He became the first Soviet man to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon since Alex Metreveli in 1973.

Until Wimbledon, the Moscow resident had never won a Grand Prix match. He qualified for the U.S. Pro Indoors at Philadelphia in February, but he lost in the first round. He also lost to Sweden’s Ulf Stenlund in the first round of the International Players Championships in Key Biscayne, Fla., later that month.