Connors Out; Lendl, Graf Both Advance

Jimmy Connors was given an early exit from Wimbledon today, upset by American Dan Goldie in the second round.

Goldie’s 7-6, 5-7, 6-4, 6-2 victory was the biggest upset of the tournament’s first three days and marked only the third time in 18 years that the 10th-seeded Connors had failed to make at least the fourth round of the grass-court Grand Slam tournament.

Top seeds Ivan Lendl and Steffi Graf advanced into the third round at Wimbledon today, while an unheralded American upset one of the women’s seeds.

Shaun Stafford, 20, from Gainesville, Fla., ranked 78th in the world, beat 13th-seeded Helen Kelesi of Canada 7-6, 7-5 in a first-round match.

Also upset was men’s No. 11 seed Brad Gilbert of the United States. In the completion of a first-round match suspended by darkness Tuesday, Gilbert lost to John Fitzgerald of Australia 6-2, 7-5, 1-6, 3-6, 6-2.

Most other seeds had much less trouble on a day of rain and rail strikes. Fans struggled to the All England Lawn Tennis Club despite walkouts by subway and railroad workers, then waited through a 3 1/2-hour rain delay.

Sanchez Beats Czech

Arantxa Sanchez, 17, the French Open women’s champion and the seventh seed at Wimbledon, won her opening match, beating Jana Pospisilova of Czechoslovakia 6-2, 7-5.

Eighth-seeded Pam Shriver of the United States beat Carin Bakkum of The Netherlands 6-2, 6-1, and 12th-seeded Mary Joe Fernandez of the United States defeated Mary Lou Daniels 6-4, 7-5.

Graf took only 43 minutes to beat American amateur Kim Kessaris 6-2, 6-1. The defending women’s champion lost only five points as she went from 2-2 in the first set to a 1-0 lead in the second. Kessaris, 16, from Hendersonville, N.C., held for 1-1, but Graf then won the last five games with the loss of only six points.

Lendl, the men’s top seed who was stretched to five sets in his opener on Monday, dropped the first set in a tiebreaker to Sweden’s Ronnie Bathman, then rallied for a 6-7, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 victory on Centre Court.