More Than Stroke of Good Luck : Australian Open: Edberg, Lendl reach final with different but efficient styles.

Ivan Lendl wielded his racket like a machine gun from the baseline and Stefan Edberg attacked at the net Friday as they set up a meeting in the Australian Open finals.

In swift executions by different methods, defending champion Lendl and two-time former champion Edberg performed almost flawlessly in two of the most one-sided Grand Slam semifinals since the Open era began in 1968.

Lendl passed Yannick Noah left and right when the frustrated Frenchman charged the net and outdueled him from the baseline when Noah stayed back to win 6-4, 6-1, 6-2 in one hour, 47 minutes.

Lendl expects to use the same strategy in the finals, commandeering the baseline most of the time and coming to the net on occasion to keep Edberg guessing.

“Always when Stefan and I play, he will serve and volley and I play defense,” Lendl said. “I will try to fend him off. It depends on how much impression I make on his serve. If he holds at love or 15, he can take chances on my serve.”

Edberg handed sluggish fellow Swede Mats Wilander the worst defeat in his 155 Grand Slam matches, 6-1, 6-1, 6-2. Edberg simply had too many weapons for Wilander and put him away with merciful quickness in 1:22.

“I had one of those days where I almost played perfect tennis,” Edberg said. “I think I played as well as I could. The key was I hit a lot of first serves today. I had great timing on my serves.”

Edberg, the third seed, hit 80 percent of first serves in and put away 39 volley winners to Wilander’s one.

“After a while you feel helpless,” said the eighth-seeded Wilander, who left all his fight in his quarterfinals victory over No. 2 Boris Becker.

“I don’t think he aced me once,” he said. “That’s when you feel helpless, when you hit a good return and he hits a great volley.

“When the other guy is playing as good as Stefan, you wait for him to lay off because you don’t expect him to play that good the whole match.”

From start to finish, when Edberg served out the last game to love, it was the most one-sided Australian semifinal since Wilander beat Johan Kriek in 1984 en route to his second Open title.

Certainly it was a reversal of their form two years ago on the same center court, when Wilander beat Edberg in the semis and went on to win his third Australian Open.

Wilander, who reached back to his old glory in beating Becker in straight sets in the quarters, could muster none of the same precision and energy against Edberg and lost to him for only the third time in nine matches on outdoor hard courts.

Wilander said he didn’t experience a mental letdown or feel tired from the Becker match, but he clearly wasn’t the same player.

Edberg won the Australian in 1985 and 1987, Wilander in 1983, 1984 and 1988.

Lendl, born in Czechoslovakia but now living in Greenwich, Conn., clicked on 67 percent of his first serves, drilled 36 winners past Noah and cut down on errors as the match progressed.

After making 20 errors in the first set, Lendl hit only eight in the second set and six in the third.

Lendl, never broken in the three sets, broke Noah in the first game of the match and the last, and four times in between.

“He was overpowering me from the baseline,” said Noah, who was successful on only 50 percent of his first serves. “I wasn’t moving as well as I wanted to if I wanted to beat him. I was too far (behind) the baseline and it was a long way to get into the net. In the end, I was a little flat, and he was playing really well.”

If Lendl didn’t play quite as perfectly as Edberg, he played well enough to satisfy himself.

“You don’t have to play perfect tennis,” Lendl said. “I don’t think it really matters. You have to win.”

There was a fraction of a second in Noah’s victory over Lendl two weeks ago when Noah leaped for a volley and hung horizontally in midair.

His racket outstretched and his dreadlocks flying, Noah poked the ball over the net and won the point.

Noah, the rejuvenated 29-year-old Frenchman, needed all of that acrobatic effort, and more, to beat Lendl again Friday but couldn’t come up with it.

The victory two weeks ago came in a tuneup in Sydney. This was for the finals of a Grand Slam, and the No. 1 Lendl is a different player when big money is on the line.

Noah said he liked the Lendl he saw in Sydney.

“He was really nice,” he said. “He was missing forehands, not making returns. I liked him a lot. The one I played today was not that nice.”

In the $3 million Australian Open, the men’s winner gets $200,000, the runner-up $100,000 and the semifinalists $50,000.