Without a Big Mac, Tennis Tournament Difficult to Swallow

Question: What do you have without a Big Mac?

Answer: Mostly just a bunch of Chicken McNuggets.

There you have it. That’s what John McEnroe’s last-minute withdrawal has done to the Volvo/Los Angeles tournament that starts today at UCLA’s L.A. Tennis Center. McEnroe withdrew Friday because his wife, Tatum O’Neal McEnroe, hadn’t delivered their second child, and he wanted to stay in New York with her because of the uncertainty of the situation.

It’s not exactly uncommon to lose a top player so close to the start of the event--flip back one year and you’ll see that Ivan Lendl also pulled out of L.A. at the last minute--but McEnroe’s absence leaves the tournament without a bona fide star attraction.

Sure, there’s top-seeded Stefan Edberg, who arrives in Los Angeles with impressive credentials. He won his second straight Australian Open title at the beginning of 1987, reached the semifinals of Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, and in addition, has won four other tournaments this year.

But, he has just started to distance himself--in the public’s perception--from the other anonymous Swedes with his game (serve and volley) and his personality (an often whimsical sense of humor). Obviously, though, he can’t be thought of as a star in the same sense as McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Boris Becker, or even Lendl, for that matter.

Brad Gilbert, the No. 2-seeded player, also comes into this tournament with a solid year behind him. At the U.S. Open, Gilbert pulled off probably the most significant upset on the men’s side with his five-set victory over Becker in the fourth round. With Gilbert, the problem has been the day after or the match after. Almost predictably, after a good first set, Gilbert went down quickly against Connors in the quarterfinals.

After Edberg and Gilbert, the dropoff in talent is just that. A dropoff. The next six seeded players are, in order, David Pate, Scott Davis, Guy Forget, Kevin Curren, Ramesh Krishnan and Johan Kriek. Between those six players, they have won just one title on the Grand Prix circuit this year, Kriek taking a minor singles championship at Livingston, N.J.

Next to Gilbert and Edberg, Krishnan probably had the most successful tournament at the U.S. Open. He defeated Kriek, Joakim Nystrom and Andrei Chesnokov before losing to Edberg in the quarterfinals.

There are, however, several other players capable of creating a stir here, among them:

--Seventeen-year-old Andre Agassi, who is trying to prove he can play well in places other than Stratton, Vt., has a good place in the draw and could meet Gilbert in the semifinals. Agassi is probably best known for his forehand, his haircut and his victories over Wimbledon champion Pat Cash and Lendl at Stratton, and not necessarily in that order.

--Michael Chang from Placentia, who at 15, makes Agassi look like a veteran. Chang got some attention from the national media at the U.S. Open with his first-round victory over Paul McNamee, making him the youngest male to win a match in the main draw in the Open era. But Chang pulled a disappearing act in the junior division, losing in the second round to peer Pete Sampras of Palos Verdes.

Notes

There are just seven first-round matches scheduled on the opening day of the Grand Prix tournament, as play begins at noon on the Stadium Court. The seeded players in action today include No. 5 Guy Forget, No. 6 Kevin Curren, No. 7 Ramesh Krishnan and No. 8 Johan Kriek. Forget plays Peter Fleming; Curren meets 1986 NCAA champion Dan Goldie; Krishnan faces Paul Annacone, who won the tournament two years ago in a thrilling 7-6, 6-7, 7-6 final against Edberg, and Kriek plays Eliot Teltscher.