French Open : Lendl Hits Groove in 4th Round

The clay-court comeback of John McEnroe was halted by the overwhelming service games of Ivan Lendl, so 18-year-old Andre Agassi was left to keep U.S. hopes alive at the French Open.

Lendl, dropping just one point on serve in the final set and three service points in all, beat McEnroe, 6-7, 7-6, 6-4, 6-4, in a fourth-round match that was resumed Wednesday. The match had been suspended Tuesday because of darkness and rain with the top-seeded Lendl leading, 4-2, in the third set.

That left Agassi the only U.S. player still alive in either singles bracket. He quickly became the youngest U.S. semifinalist ever at Paris with a 6-2, 6-2, 6-4 victory over Guillermo Perez-Roldan of Argentina.

“It’s a dream come true, almost,” Agassi said. “What I’ve done this week is something I’ve always dreamed about.”

Agassi will meet third-seeded Mats Wilander of Sweden, who came back from nearly two sets down to beat Emilio Sanchez of Spain. No American man has won the French Open since Tony Trabert in 1955.

Lendl advanced to the quarterfinals for the sixth year in a row, where he will meet Jonas B. Svensson of Sweden. The defending champion evened his career record against McEnroe at 14-14 with pinpoint shots.

“He hit an incredible amount of lines,” said McEnroe, whose fourth-round finish at Roland Garros was his best on clay in a long time. “I think I counted 12 of them. Balls that were skidding off the line.

“It’s an old saying that it’s better to be lucky than good. He’s good and he got lucky.”

In their quarterfinal match, Sanchez, seeded 12th, took the first set from Wilander and led, 5-1, in the second set before the Swede charged back for a 6-7, 7-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory.

“He played the kind of game, killing me a little bit, slowly, slowly, slowly,” Sanchez said.

Wilander, who lost the final to Lendl a year ago, won five games in a row to take a 6-5 lead in the second set, only to have Sanchez break his serve to send the set into a tiebreaker. Wilander won it, 7-3, and stormed away.

Agassi faced just two break points in the first two sets, saving them both and winning the two sets before 90 minutes had passed on rocket-like forehands that moved Perez-Roldan all over.

“He played very well and very fast, and I couldn’t attack,” Perez-Roldan said.

Agassi, whose cowboy whoops and polite court manners have won over the Parisian fans, blew kisses to the crowd and took a deep bow as the cheering died down.

McEnroe, in the latest of a series of comeback attempts aimed at regaining the No. 1 ranking he gave up to Lendl in late 1985, said he was pleased with the way he played “except for the end result. That’s an important part of it.”

All but one of the eight games Lendl won Wednesday ended with winners, either unreturnable serves, or shots down the lines or deep into the corners.

McEnroe was not playing badly. He served two love games himself and was charging the net at every opportunity.

But the spark that showed in his play Tuesday, and ignited a pair of tirades against umpire Richard Kaufmann over weather conditions and line calls, was missing.

“I don’t think he can play much better than he did in the first two sets yesterday,” Lendl said. “Today, I thought he was a little slower. I don’t know if that was because he was tired, or I was sharper.”