French Open : Darkness Halts Lendl, McEnroe; Cash Upset

John McEnroe’s old spark brightened and Pat Cash’s dimmed on a stormy Tuesday at the French Open filled with rain and controversy.

Although the women’s field was beset by the same problems, three matches were completed to set up the semifinal pairings with four teen-agers. On Thursday, top-seeded Steffi Graf of West Germany will play No. 4 Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina, and unseeded Nicole Provis of Australia will take on No. 13 Natalia Zvereva of the Soviet Union.

McEnroe, seeded 16th, argued about weather conditions, slippery courts, darkness and line calls and lit up a center-court crowd, before play was stopped because of darkness. Defending men’s champion Ivan Lendl had a slight lead, 6-7, 7-6, 4-2. Both tiebreaker scores were 7-3.

“Maybe we should get balls that glow in the dark, so we can see them better,” McEnroe shouted at umpire Richard Kaufmann as he broke Lendl’s serve to pull to 4-2 in the third set.

Referee Jacques Dorfmann then stepped in and called off play. The match will be resumed today.

But fourth-seeded Pat Cash of Australia was not saved by darkness. Andrei Chesnokov, seeded 14th from the Soviet Union, eliminated Cash, 2-6, 6-2, 6-4, 6-3, in a match that ended just before the McEnroe-Lendl match was suspended.

Cash said, “We shouldn’t have been playing, but they were desperate to get the matches in.”

Intermittent rain again created scheduling problems, postponing two men’s quarterfinals for one day--Mats Wilander of Sweden vs. Emilio Sanchez of Spain and Andre Agassi vs. Guillermo Perez-Roldan of Argentina in a battle of 18-year-olds.

In the completion of a suspended match from Monday, the 18-year-old Sabatini beat Helen Kelesi of Canada, 4-6, 6-1, 6-3. The match ended with Kelesi complaining she was “cheated” when a line judge changed a call on the last point. The judge reversed the call after Sabatini questioned it.

Women’s tennis supervisor Geraldine Clark upheld the decision but said later she may not have had all the information.

Zvereva, 17, upset sixth-seeded Helena Sukova, 23, of Czechoslovakia, 6-2, 6-3, to become the first Soviet woman semifinalist here since Olga Morozova in 1975.

She will play the 18-year-old Provis, who beat 16-year-old Arantxa Sanchez, 7-5, 3-6, 6-4, to become the first Australian woman semifinalist here since Diane Fromholtz in 1980.

McEnroe, 29, is the oldest player left in the men’s field.

He and Lendl were 1-1, 15-15 in the first set when it started raining, and McEnroe had his first run-in with the officials.

“I’m not going to play on,” he told Kaufmann. “Why should I continue to play?”

Kaufmann finally sent the players into the locker room to wait out an hour-long delay.

It rained again as Lendl tied it, 6-6, on a backhand cross-court winner, and McEnroe complained again. This time, supervisor of officials Thomas Karlberg came out and said, “Play on.”

McEnroe went on to win the first-set tiebreaker with a backhand volley and a forehand cross-court winner for final two points.

In the second-set tiebreaker, Lendl went from 2-3 to 4-3 on McEnroe’s serve and won it on a forehand passing shot that McEnroe strongly challenged to no avail.

Cash complained after his loss to Chesnokov, saying the rain-soaked courts were the slowest he has ever played on.

“At 3-3 in the fourth set, it was starting to get so dark I was mistiming the ball,” he said.

Cash was serving at 30-0 in the seventh game of the fourth set when he lost three games in a row.