Tennis Roundup : Becker Beats Edberg in a Wimbledon Tuneup

Boris Becker got a big paycheck and a large confidence boost for Wimbledon as he defeated Stefan Edberg, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, Sunday to win the $385,000 Stella Artois grass-court tennis championship at Queen’s Club in London.

“I’ve proved to myself I’m there for good, at least on this surface,” the West German said after winning the Wimbledon warm-up for the third time in four years and earning $54,000.

“Naturally, I must have a good shot for Wimbledon,” said Becker, who won the Grand Slam event in 1985 and ’86. “I could lose. I’m not a machine. But I hope I don’t.”

Edberg won only 13 points in the first set but rallied to even the match in the second.

In the final set, Edberg matched Becker stroke for stroke through the first seven games.

But at 3-4, 30-all in the eighth game, Edberg was asked by umpire Richard Ings to replay his second serve when Becker indicated he wasn’t ready to receive. Edberg promptly double-faulted, then double-faulted again to drop his serve and fall behind, 3-5.

Edberg, who was visibly upset, then lost the final game of the 1-hour 45-minute match. The normally mild-mannered Swede showed his frustration by slamming his racket on his tennis bag.

Becker, who won this event in 1985 and ‘87, said his opening-set performance may have been the best of his career. “I’ve never seen myself play like that,” he said.

Becker has a 9-4 record against Edberg. The West German scored his first Grand Prix victory at Queen’s Club in 1985, a launching pad for his consecutive Wimbledon titles. The winner of this tournament has gone on to win Wimbledon 11 times.

At Birmingham, England, Claudia Kohde-Kilsch won her first final in almost three years by ending Pam Shriver’s domination of the Dow tournament, a grass-court event, with a 6-1, 6-2 victory.

The second-seeded West German prevented the top-seeded Shriver from taking a fifth consecutive title in the Wimbledon tuneup event.

The victory, in brisk winds at the Edgbaston Priory Club, was the first championship on the women’s tennis tour for Kohde-Kilsch since she beat Shriver in the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles in August 1985.

The 24-year-old West German broke Shriver’s hesitant serve twice in the first set, which lasted only 23 minutes.

In the second set, she broke the third-ranked American again in the opening game, only for Shriver to break back immediately. But Shriver’s comeback hopes were short-lived as Kohde-Kilsch broke again in the third game.

At Edinburgh, Scotland, Peter Lundgren of Sweden beat Jakob Hlasek of Switzerland, 6-3, 7-5, to win the Bank of Scotland grass-court championship.

It took just 69 minutes for Lundgren, with a groundstroke-based game better suited to clay than grass, to beat Hlasek and more than double his 1988 winnings with the $54,000 winner’s check.

At Bologna, Italy, Argentine teen-ager Alberto Mancini upset Emilio Sanchez, the world’s 16th-ranked player, to win the $123,400 Bologna Open, 7-5, 7-6, for his first Grand Prix victory.

The 19-year-old Argentine, ranked 67th in the world, had previously won small tournaments in Portugal and Brazil. He is playing his first full year on the circuit.

Stan Smith beat his longtime friend and doubles partner Bob Lutz, 6-2, 5-7, 6-4, to win the men’s over-35 singles championship in the $135,000 Tournament of Legends at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I.

Later, Smith and Lutz teamed up to beat Ilie Nastase and Dick Stockton and win the men’s over-35 doubles, 7-6, 6-3.

The field for the three-day tournament included Pancho Gonzalez, Pancho Segura, Virginia Wade, Evonne Goolagong, Roy Emerson, Dick Savitt, Vic Seixas, Owen Davidson, Cliff Drysdale, Joanne Russell, Marty Riessen and Kerry Reid.

Billie Jean King, who was scheduled to play, withdrew because of a shoulder injury.