Tennis Roundup : Sabatini Goes Three Sets to Survive Day of Upsets

Top-seeded Gabriela Sabatini survived a day of upsets, struggling past Laura Lapi of Italy 6-3, 6-7 (7-3), 6-3, Thursday to advance to the quarterfinals of the Italian Open Tennis Championships at Rome.

The tournament lost three of its top five seeded players as No. 2 Manuela Maleeva and No. 3 Helen Kelesi lost third-round matches, and No. 5 Hana Mandlikova defaulted with a back injury.

Lapi, 19, almost added to the list of upsets, rallying from a 3-5 deficit in the second set to win the tiebreaker.

But in the third set, Sabatini began to force the play, driving hard backhands down the line and rushing the net.

France’s Nathalie Tauziat, seeded 14th, pulled off the biggest surprise, beating Bulgaria’s Maleeva, 2-6, 6-3, 6-0, on the slow clay of the Foro Italico.

Argentina’s Bettina Fulco, seeded 10th, ousted Kelesi, 6-3, 2-6, 6-3. The third-seeded Canadian was last year’s losing finalist.

Mandlikova hurt her back hitting an overhead in the warmups of her match against Sabrina Goles of Yugoslavia. Mandlikova won the first set, 6-1, but was losing, 2-5, in the second when she defaulted.

Tim Wilkison won the first nine games en route to stunning top-seeded Brad Gilbert, 6-0, 6-1, in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Clay Court Championships at Isle of the Palms, S.C.

Wilkison, ranked 125th in the world, closed out the victory when Gilbert was assessed his third code violation of the match, forcing him to forfeit the final game.

Gilbert, ranked 16th, was assessed two violations for racket abuse and the final one for ball abuse. The final violation came after Wilkison had just broken Gilbert’s serve.

Under the rules, a player gets a warning after the first code violation and loses a point after the second. A third code violation results in the offending player forfeiting a game.

Gilbert was fined $850 for the violations by the Men’s Tennis Council, a spokesman said.

Earlier, Cassio Motta of Brazil took advantage of poor serving by fifth-seeded Johan Kriek to advance to the quarterfinals with a 7-5, 7-5 victory.

Kriek got in only 44.3% of his first serves; he had 10 double faults and six aces.

In another second-round match, Javier Frana of Argentina beat Barry Moir, 6-2, 6-4. Frana, ranked No. 121, will meet second-seeded Michael Chang in the quarterfinals.

Top-seeded Ivan Lendl and second-seeded Boris Becker didn’t waste any time advancing to the quarterfinals of the German Open at Hamburg, West Germany.

Lendl, using powerful ground strokes, defeated Patrick Kuhnen of West Germany, 6-1, 6-1, in 56 minutes. Becker showed his new-found confidence on clay to beat Martin Jaite of Argentina, 6-2, 6-2, in 80 minutes.

In other matches, West Germany’s Carl-Uwe Steeb eliminated Fernando Luna of Spain, 6-3, 1-6, 6-2, and Horst Skoff of Austria defeated 16-year-old Goran Ivanisevic of Yugoslavia, 2-6, 6-2, 6-3.