Tennis Roundup : McEnroe Gets Past Schapers in Hardcourts

Second-seeded John McEnroe shrugged off a slow start and routed No. 15 Michiel Schapers of the Netherlands, 4-6, 6-1, 6-2, Thursday to reach the quarterfinals of the U.S. Hardcourts tennis tournament at Indianapolis.

Top-seeded Stefan Edberg defeated David Pate, 6-3, 6-1, in an evening match.

Earlier, third-seeded Tim Mayotte advanced with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over David Wheaton.

McEnroe improved his record against Schapers to 4-0 using service breaks at the start of the second and third sets.

McEnroe broke Schapers at love in the second game of the second set for a 2-0 lead and coasted from there in his first tournament since injuring his shoulder at Wimbledon in July.

McEnroe hit only 15 winners in losing the first set but had 33 in the final two sets to offset Schaper’s 63% first-serve ratio.

In other third-round matches, Pete Sampras beat Johan Carlsson of Sweden, 6-3, 6-4; No. 4 Aaron Krickstein ousted No. 13 Wally Masur of Australia, 7-6 (7-3), 7-5; fifth-seeded Jay Berger routed Barry Moir of South Africa, 6-1, 6-1; No. 8 Todd Witsken defeated Gary Muller of South Africa, 7-5, 6-3, and 10th-seeded Richard Matuszewski got past Andrew Sznajder of Canada, 6-2, 3-6, 6-1.

Sixth-seeded Francisco Roig of Spain and No. 7 Gilbert Schaller of Austria each advanced to the quarterfinals of a tournament at Pescara, Italy.

The top five seeded players have been eliminated.

Roig defeated Italy’s Corrado Aprili, 7-6 (7-5), 6-4, and Schaller overpowered Italy’s Alessandro De Minicis, 6-2, 7-5.