Tennis Roundup : McEnroe Struggles Into the Semifinals, 7-6, 7-6

John McEnroe struggled into the semifinals of the $752,000 Suntory Japan Open at Tokyo on Friday with a 7-6, 7-6 victory over Japan’s Shuzo Matsuoka.

Earlier, top-seeded Stefan Edberg of Sweden beat Australia’s Brad Drewett, 6-4, 6-3.

McEnroe, ranked No. 1 in the world for four years starting in 1981, is competing in his first major tournament since the U.S. Open last September.

McEnroe, now ranked 15th, and Matsuoka, ranked 273rd, each held serve through the 12th game of the first set.

In the first tiebreaker, Matsuoka led 4-1, but McEnroe used a strong serve to tie it at 7-7 and 8-8 and finally won it, 10-8.

In the second set, each player again held serve until the tiebreaker, which McEnroe won, 9-7.

Today, McEnroe faces Brad Gilbert, who beat David Pate, 6-3, 6-2, and Edberg meets third-seeded Tim Mayotte, who defeated Sweden’s Mikael Pernfors, 6-3, 6-4.

Stephanie Rehe faces Patty Fendick in the women’s singles final. Rehe, seeded sixth, beat Marianne Werdel, 6-3, 6-3, and Fendick, seeded fourth, ousted Leila Meskhi of the Soviet Union, 6-0, 6-3.

At Amelia Island, Fla., top-ranked Steffi Graf needed only 55 minutes to beat sixth-seeded Katerina Maleeva of Bulgaria, 6-2, 6-0, in the quarterfinals of a $300,000 women’s tournament.

Today, the 18-year-old West German meets third-seeded Gabriela Sabatini, 17, of Argentina, who beat Michelle Torres, 6-1, 6-1, in 50 minutes.

Graf’s only loss in 27 matches this year was in her last match against Sabatini in Boca Raton, Fla., last month. She is 11-1 against Sabatini.

Second-seeded Martina Navratilova defeated Kathleen Horvath, 6-3, 6-1, and will play fourth-seeded Claudia Kohde-Kilsch of West Germany, who defeated fifth-seeded Zina Garrison, 6-3, 6-2.

Navratilova, who has won four straight tournaments, improved her record to 24-1 this year.

Top-seeded Andrei Chesnokov of the Soviet Union beat Karel Novacek of Czechoslovakia, 7-5, 6-1, to gain the semifinals of a $145,000 tournament at Nice, France.