Tennis Roundup : Connors Turns Back McEnroe; Lendl Wins

Jimmy Connors broke serve in the eighth game of the third set to key his first victory over John McEnroe in their last 11 meetings, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, Friday in the quarterfinals of the Player’s International tennis tournament at Montreal.

In other quarterfinal matches, top-seeded Ivan Lendl survived a late rally to defeat Slobodan Zivojinovic, 6-3, 7-5; second-seeded Stefan Edberg defeated No. 8 Kevin Curren, 7-6, 7-5, after coming back from a 1-5 deficit in the second set with three consecutive service breaks, and third-seeded Boris Becker of West Germany beat Peter Lundgren, ranked 112th in the world, 1-6, 6-2, 6-1.

Connors will meet Lendl, and Becker will play Edberg in today’s semifinals.

“Any time I play McEnroe, it brings out the best in both of us,” said Connors, who had gone four years without beating McEnroe. “It was pretty exciting. I got a lot of my first serves in tonight. I did everything well. That’s what I have to do to beat McEnroe.”

Zivojinovic fought back from love-40 in the 12th game of the second set against Lendl to tie the game. With the advantage to Lendl, Zivojinovic’s first serve was ruled out.

The 6-foot 4-inch Yugoslav protested the call by throwing his racket, ball and towel to the ground, all to no avail. He then double-faulted with his next serve to lose the set and match.

“I was cold out there,” Zivojinovic said of a 1 1/2-hour rain delay that interrupted their match. “He returns well, and my serve wasn’t as good as it should have been.”

Zivojinovic said bad calls by the line judges on some of his first serves hurt his effort. Lendl agreed that some poor calls were made against his opponent.

“He got two bad calls on the third match point,” Lendl said. “I got lucky breaks, but he played badly. He missed first serves.”

Lendl said he played well enough to win but was not at the top of his game.

“I don’t want to peak right now,” he said. “I have two weeks to go until the U.S. Open. I’m not playing great, but I’m not playing horribly.”

Becker said the rain delays, one of which postponed the start of Lendl’s match for four hours, slowed the court and hurt his concentration in the first set.

“It was so unexpectedly slow,” Becker said. “I played the wrong way. I tried to rush and play volley. I couldn’t serve and volley because it was too slow. He returned well and had the better shots. I was overrun and had to change tactics.”

The winner of the $375,000 tournament will get $51,000. The runner-up receives $25,500.

Top-seeded Kent Carlsson of Sweden pulled out of his match against unseeded Francesco Cancellotti because of an aching left knee, sending the Italian into the semifinals of the $121,000 Aosta Valley clay court tournament at Saint Vincent, Italy.

Unseeded Chilean Pedro Rebolledo also made the semifinals by defeating Australian Paul McNamee, 6-2, 6-2, in their quarterfinal match.

In other matches, fifth-seeded Paolo Cane of Italy defeated Simone Colombo of Italy, 7-5, 6-3, and No. 8 Claudio Pistolesi of Italy beat Christian Miniussi of Argentina, 6-2, 5-7, 6-3.