Australian Open Tennis : McEnroe Returns With 4-Set Victory; Lendl, Sabatini Roll

Bad weather and John McEnroe hit the Australian Open at the same time Tuesday.

Coincidence? Maybe, but McEnroe was making his first appearance in the Australian Open since his stormy exit in the 1985 quarterfinals when he lost to Slobodan Zivojinovic and shouted across the net: “I’ll get you for this.”

Well, Mac is back. And on a dreary, day beneath the closed retractable roof of center court at the National Tennis Center here, McEnroe defeated Michael Westphal, 6-4, 2-6, 7-5, 6-2, in a first-round match.

Westphal fought off 2 match points before McEnroe closed out the match, a position he put himself in after breaking Westphal in the seventh game.

When the match ended, McEnroe hit a ball into the stands. What did that signify? Relief? Joy?

“Not really, I just wanted to give someone in the stands a ball,” McEnroe said. “There’s not anything too psychologically deep in that.”

McEnroe said he was happy with the way he played. Since it is so early in the year, he had no idea what shape his game would be in. But with McEnroe, his head, not his game, is his main concern.

“Just being here is the main thing,” he said. “The farther I get, the more it will help me later on. I just want to get better than I was, and if i do that, I’m going to win some big events. I’m getting closer and closer.

“Mentally, I don’t feel as tough. I don’t dig in quite as much. It’s hard to say if that will return or not. I just have to remain positive and hope.”

Second-seeded Ivan Lendl and fourth-seeded Stefan Edberg also advanced with victories.

Lendl, who dispatched West German Alexander Mronz, 6-0, 6-1, 6-3, had more trouble with the tennis balls than Mronz.

Nassau brand name tennis balls, which debuted at last year’s Australian Open, are once again being used, much to the dismay of Lendl, who complained that they are too soft, among other things.

“I could hit a hockey puck harder than those balls,” Lendl said. “More accurate, too.”

He said the balls react differently when they are struck on the stenciled letters or when they bounce on the writing on them.

“They either bounce fine or skip through,” he said. “Look at the marks on the court. There are either little green ones with little fuzz marks or black ones.”

Apparently, Gabriela Sabatini failed to notice. Maybe she had no time while overwhelming Cecilia Dahlman of Sweden, 6-0, 6-1, with a powerful service game.

“I didn’t have any problems with the balls,” Satabini said.

McEnroe said the balls seemed heavy and tended to fly.

Whatever the condition of the tennis balls, Lendl sent them back, fuzz flying, in the general direction of Mronz’s feet. So overpowered was Mronz that he did not win a game on his serve until the second game of the third set.

“It was like a stone fell off my heart,” Mronz said.

Steffi Graf, the defending champion, had little trouble in her first-round match Monday night, defeating wild-card entry Kerry-Anne Guse of Australia, 6-2, 6-1.

Martina Navratilova, seeded second, won her first-round match today, beating Andrea Betzner of West Germany, 6-0, 6-1.

Sabatini is playing in her first Australian Open, which she has skipped in the past because she preferred to take a vacation instead.

But now, with her announced intention of overtaking Graf in the rankings, Sabatini made a change in her plans.

“I’ll vacation in February,” she said. “I have to play (the Open). It’s a good tournament and I think I have good prospects.

“I’m serving very well, I feel very good, I’m playing very well,” Sabatini said.

Good enough to become No. 1?

“I think I’m getting there,” she said. “I’m very close. I feel much better, and I think this could be a very good year.”

Last year wasn’t a bad one for Edberg, for sure. The Swede won Wimbledon. Edberg is also a 2-time Australian winner, but those victories came on the grass at Kooyong.

Edberg got through to the second round with a 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory over Roger Smith, a formidable opponent. Smith had a victory over Lendl last year at Stratton Mountain, Vt.

Wendy Turnbull, all 5 feet 4 inches of her, used to cover the tennis court with such speed she was nicknamed Rabbit.

But, at 36, Rabbit’s feet don’t move as quickly as they once did.

So after she lost, 7-5, 7-5, to Nathalie Herreman of France on Tuesday, Turnbull announced that she had just played her final singles match.

“My legs won’t carry me,” she said. “I really have no desire to play singles any longer. I’m realistic. I just can’t run around with the girls anymore.”

Turnbull said she will continue to play doubles the rest of the year and then retire from tennis altogether.

“I’m going to wind down my career,” she said. “I can’t see myself even playing doubles 12 months from now, but I can’t stop cold turkey.”

Turnbull, who left school in Brisbane at 15 and worked in a bank for 4 years, turned professional in 1970. She won 6 singles titles in her career and kept a top-10 ranking for 8 years, reaching as high as No. 3 in 1985.

However, she became known as a doubles specialist. She won 9 Grand Slam doubles titles in her career, 4 of them women’s and 5 mixed.

She said she will never forget her 1977 U.S. Open singles final against Chris Evert, which she lost in straight sets, but only after defeating Rosie Casals, Virginia Wade and Martina Navratilova to get there.

Turnbull, who is working as a commentator at the Open for Australian television, would like to continue in that field.

“I have no regrets,” Turnbull said. “My goal was to get into the top 10 and I got to No. 3. I actually did better than I ever thought I would.”

Tennis Notes

Paul Chamberlin of Manhattan Beach upset unseeded but highly regarded Joakim Nystrom of Sweden, 6-2, 4-6, 3-6, 6-2, 6-4. Pete Sampras, a 17-year-old from Rancho Palos Verdes, lost his first-round match to Christian Saceanu of West Germany, 6-4, 6-4, 7-6. . . .

The biggest upsets of the women’s draw were the losses of seventh-seeded Barbara Potter and ninth-seeded Lori McNeil. New Zealand’s Belinda Cordwell beat Potter, 6-3, 6-3. Unseeded Yuki Koizumi of Japan, ranked 202 in the world, defeated the 13th-ranked McNeil, 6-1, 4-6, 6-4.

The controversial Nassau tennis balls were used in last year’s tournament because they could not be used in the Olympics without first being played in a Grand Slam event. The Australian Tennis Federation was paid a substantial amount to use the tennis balls again this year. “I don’t think they’re really best for the players, but there’s not really much choice at this point,” John McEnroe said.