Tennis Roundup : Agassi Reaches Pro Indoor Semifinals

Top-seeded Andre Agassi defeated Dan Goldie, 6-1, 6-4, Friday night when Goldie hit a cross-court backhand into the net on the sixth match point in the $602,500 U.S. Pro Indoor tennis championships at Philadelphia.

The victory advanced Agassi to a semifinal today against third-seeded Tim Mayotte, who defeated Brad Gilbert, 6-4, 5-7, 6-4.

In later matches Friday, second-seeded Boris Becker of West Germany was scheduled to face 10th-seeded Christo van Rensburg of South Africa, and No. 4 Mikael Pernfors of Sweden was to meet No. 11 Robert Seguso.

The final game of Agassi’s match went 14 points before he closed out the victory.

“Dan hurt his stomach muscle early in the tournament, and he wasn’t, I don’t think, serving or hitting a lot of things like he normally would,” Agassi said.

For the second time in 10 days, John McEnroe had little trouble beating Carl Uwe Steeb of West Germany, this time advancing to the semifinals of the $291,000 Grand Prix tournament at Lyon, France.

Last week McEnroe beat the West German, ranked 92nd in the world, handily in the first round of the Milan tournament.

“After I took the game at 1-1, I feel the tide just turned. I was feeling very comfortable,” McEnroe said. “Everything just felt right. That’s what I hope to have in the next two days.”

In another quarterfinal, top-seeded Jakob Hlasek of Switzerland held off four set points to beat Patrick Kuhnen of West Germany, 6-3, 7-6.

Larisa Savchenko, seeded second, of the Soviet Union defeated fifth-seeded Patty Fendick, 6-1, 6-1, to reach the semifinals of the $250,000 Virginia Slims of California at Oakland.

Savchenko will play the winner of a quarterfinal matching Martina Navratilova and Jenny Byrne of Australia.