French Open Tennis Championships : McEnroe Serves Up Win to Set Up Chang’s Dream Duel

John McEnroe, who had 13 aces, moved into the third round of the French Open Thursday to set up a battle of generations.

McEnroe, seeded 16th, beat Christian Bergstrom of Sweden, 6-2, 6-4, 6-3, in the second round and will next play Michael Chang of Placentia, Calif.

McEnroe, at 29 years old, is the oldest man left in the tournament. Chang, at 16, is the youngest. He was 7 when McEnroe won his first Grand Slam title and said he has dreamed of playing him.

“I kill him, of course, I kill him,” Chang said of those dream encounters. “It was always one of those dramatic matches. I always came out with the great shots and I won.”

Ivan Lendl, Pat Cash, Boris Becker, Henri Leconte and Andrei Chesnokov won among the seeded men’s players, although No. 4 Cash and No. 11 Leconte both needed five sets.

But upsets swept three more seeded players from the women’s draw--No. 5 Manuela Maleeva of Bulgaria, No. 9 Lori McNeil, and No. 12 Sandra Cecchini of Italy.

Helen Kelesi of Canada eliminated Maleeva, 6-4, 6-2; 16-year-old Conchita Martinez of Spain defeated McNeil, 1-6, 6-3, 6-1; and 17-year-old Brenda Schultz of the Netherlands beat Cecchini, 6-4, 7-5.

Those losses left No. 1 Steffi Graf and No. 4 Gabriela Sabatini as the only remaining seeded players in their half of the women’s field. Graf beat Susan Sloane of Lexington, Ky., 6-0, 6-1, in a third-round match, and Sabatini downed Masako Yanagi of Japan, 6-2, 6-1.

McEnroe, who relentlessly charged the net, didn’t have much trouble, either.

In other men’s matches, Lendl beat Niclas Kroon of Sweden, 6-4, 6-0, 6-1; Becker beat Petr Korda of Czechoslovakia, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4; Cash downed Javier Sanchez of Spain, 6-3, 3-6, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3; Leconte defeated Bruno Oresar of Yugoslavia, 6-1, 6-0, 6-7, 1-6, 6-2, and Chesnokov beat Richey Reneberg of Houston, 6-4, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.

After having her injured right foot examined, Chris Evert was cleared to continue in the French Open, but her third-round match today was moved to Saturday.

Officials said that Evert, seeded third, had a bone scan to check for a fracture in the area where she had a bone spur.

“The tests were negative, and right now it is diagnosed as bursitis,” said Maureen Hanlon of the Women’s International Tennis Assn. “It takes 24 hours for the dye to leave the body and that is why she isn’t playing on Friday.”