French Open Tennis Championships : Unseeded Svensson Upsets Lendl, 7-6, 7-5, 6-2

Martina Navratilova. Chris Evert. Now, Ivan Lendl. All gone from the French Open tennis championships.

“There sure have been a lot of upsets,” said Steffi Graf, the defending women’s champion and one of the few big-name players left as the tournament enters its last three days.

Lendl was the latest victim. Distracted by a nearby labor rally and suffering a strained chest-shoulder muscle late in the second set, the defending men’s champion was eliminated by unseeded Jonas Svensson of Sweden 7-6, 7-5, 6-2 Thursday.

“I don’t think anyone expected it and certainly not me,” Svensson said. “Maybe a three-set win for him.”

In the women’s field, 18-year-old Graf won a place in Saturday’s final with a 6-3, 7-6 victory over fourth-seeded Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina Thursday.

If Graf was expected to be in the women’s championship match again, her opponent certainly was not. Natalia Zvereva, 17, last year’s junior women’s champion in Paris, overcame stomach cramps and a match point to defeat unseeded Nicole Provis of Australia 6-3, 6-7, 7-5.

“It’s a big, big, big difference,” said Zvereva, who eliminated two-time winner Navratilova in the third round. “Can you imagine? That’s juniors and this is women’s.”

Zvereva, seeded 13th, is the first Soviet to make a Grand Slam final since Olga Morozova played Chris Evert for the French and Wimbledon titles in 1974.

Lendl’s elimination left the men’s field wide open.

“Everybody has an equal chance,” said 11th-seeded Henri Leconte of France, who will meet Svensson after eliminating 14th-seeded Andrei Chenokov of the Soviet Union.

Today’s other semifinal pits two-time winner Mats Wilander against ninth-seeded Andre Agassi, an 18-year-old from Las Vegas.

“The only one who has won it is Mats,” said Leconte, a semifinalist in 1986. “He is playing well, but everyone is playing well.”

Lendl said if anyone had an edge, it was Wilander.

“My mind would say it’s wide open,” said Lendl, who missed the chance to become the first man to win the French Open three years in a row since Bjorn Borg. “But on the other hand, Wilander probably is the best of all the guys.”

Svensson, 21, beat Lendl with a confusing game of serve-and-volley mixed with dropshots. Nursing the aching muscle injured late in the second set and distracted by a demonstration by aircraft workers just outside the Roland Garros complex, Lendl was down so far so early that he said only a miracle could have saved him from his earliest elimination from a Grand Slam tournament since Wimbledon three years ago.

“I thought it was serious before we started. You’ve got to take the guy seriously. You just have to keep on playing,” Lendl said. “It’s better to be lucky than good. But it’s best to be both.”