TENNIS ITALIAN OPEN : Muster Vow Made Good in Victory

Last year, Austria’s Thomas Muster came to the Italian Open hobbling on crutches and wearing a cast on his left leg. He told the Center Court crowd he was coming back this year to win.

Muster made good on his promise, using an array of punishing top-spin strokes from both wings and frustrating drop shots in outplaying an exhausted Andrei Chesnokov of the Soviet Union, 6-1, 6-3, 6-1, Sunday before 8,000 in 90-degree weather at Foro Italico.

“When I said that it was more like a joke than a dream,” said Muster, 22, who won $161,000 and his third title in seven finals.

Chesnokov, seeded eighth, admitted he was exhausted physically and mentally from a three-set, three-hour semi-final victory over Emilio Sanchez of Spain that lasted until 11 Saturday night.

“I feel like I had a short night,” he said. “I didn’t get to sleep until 3 in the morning. To play a late match like that and come back and play in the early afternoon was not good for me.”

Muster has had remarkable success since a car backed into his left knee in a parking lot in April 1989, just before he was to play Ivan Lendl in the final of the Key Biscayne, Fla., tournament.

It was a sweet victory for him because he reversed Chesnokov’s straight-set win in Monte Carlo last month.

“This wasn’t an easy victory,” said Muster, seeded 10th, of the one-hour 53-minute blitz. “I think he was tired from Saturday night’s long match, and I played perfect tennis today. I didn’t miss today.”

Chesnokov agreed.

“He played unbelievably well today,” Chesnokov said. “I tried to beat him any way I could, but I couldn’t find one.”

Chesnokov broke Muster’s serve in the first game, the only time he would do so.

But Muster answered with a break of his own to even the score, 1-1, and begin a run of eight consecutive games that gave him the opening set and carried him to a 2-0 lead the next.

After losing those eight consecutive games and being broken four times in a row, Chesnokov held serve midway through the second set and held up his index finger in a sign that his futility had finally ended. It hadn’t.

Chesnokov, 24, trimmed Muster’s lead to 4-2 in the second set but got no closer.

Muster, normally a stronger baseline player, varied his game.

“It was a little surprising to me,” Chesnokov said. “He went to the net more than in Monte Carlo. He had a lot more patience and he hit the ball harder.”