McEnroe Fired Up After Penalty, Beats Skoff; Becker Also Advances

John McEnroe got fired up after a penalty point and advanced to the quarterfinals of the Paris Open tennis tournament today, beating Horst Skoff of Austria.

Boris Becker, the top-seed, double-faulted a match point away before finally edging Frenchman Guy Forget 6-7 (4-7) 6-4, 7-6 (7-3) in a second-round match that lasted almost 3 1/2 hours.

Seventh-seeded Alberto Mancini was eliminated when Australian Wally Masur beat the Argentine, 4-6, 6-3, 6-0. Masur meets Becker in the quarterfinals. Masur defeated Becker at the Australian Open this year.

McEnroe, who won 7-6 (7-3), 6-0, wasted two set points in the 10th game of the first set against Skoff and slammed his racket on the court, which got him a warning. Then in the 12th game of the first set, McEnroe lost his temper after Richard Ings, the chair umpire, overruled a linesman on a Skoff serve, making it 15-0.

The penalty point made it 30-0, and McEnroe lost the game and went into the tiebreaker.

But McEnroe’s game suddenly spurted, and he won the tiebreaker 7-3 and shut out Skoff in the second set, 6-0.

Asked whether the penalty point got his energy going, McEnroe said, “I can’t explain what happened. Maybe it did.”

The No. 3 seed McEnroe next faces French Open champion Michael Chang on Friday.

“If I play well I should win,” McEnroe said. “But he’s really come on a lot in the past year.