Chang Worn Out, but He Wears Down Davis : Tennis: Weary from a busy schedule, fourth-seeded player wins in three sets.

Michael Chang doesn’t always mind if a first-round match requires him to play three sets.

“If I win, I think it’s OK,” a weary Chang announced after outlasting Scott Davis, 7-5, 4-6, 6-4, in an opening-round match Tuesday at the Volvo/Los Angeles tournament at UCLA.

Truth be known, though, the fourth-seeded Chang probably would have welcomed a less strenuous match or, even more to his liking, a day off.

After winning the Canadian Open Sunday at Toronto, his first tournament title since he suffered a freak hip injury last December while practicing in Florida, Chang caught a red-eye flight to Lake Tahoe, where Monday night he played an exhibition against Andre Agassi.

After the match, his original flight to Orange County was canceled, so he didn’t arrive home in Placentia Tuesday until about 4 a.m.

A little more than 12 hours later, he was on the court against Davis, a native of Santa Monica who once was ranked 11th in the world.

“I’m pretty tired,” Chang said afterward. “It was kind of difficult because I came in here expecting to play on a slow hardcourt. But for some reason, they resurfaced it and when I first hit a few balls out there, it was kind of like lightning and I was a little late.”

At the end, though, he was ahead of Davis.

“Scott is a very dangerous player,” Chang said of Davis, who has slipped in the rankings to 81st after peaking in 1985. “To get up to No. 11 in the world, the guy’s got to be a great player. He hit some great shots today. He’s the type of player who will take a lot of chances, and if he converts on those chances, he can be very, very dangerous.”

Or very sloppy. Davis made 50 unforced errors. “The difference might have been that Scott missed a little bit more,” understated Chang, who had 17 unforced errors.

Tennis Notes

Aaron Krickstein, the defending champion, squandered two match points in the second set and a 4-2 lead in the third and was upset by Todd Witsken, 5-7, 7-6 (7-4), 6-4. A former USC All-American, Witsken rallied after hitting an approach shot into the net, giving Krickstein double match point at 15-40 in the 10th game of the second set. After drawing a code violation for hitting a ball into the crowd, Witsken won the next four points to even the set at 5-5. Krickstein, playing his first match since June 19, when he aggravated an elbow injury and retired from a tournament at Manchester, England, blamed the loss on his long layoff. “Mainly, my arm just kind of got tired,” said Krickstein, who withdrew from Wimbledon because of the elbow injury. “Maybe it was fatigue from not playing.”

Top-seeded Stefan Edberg, playing in his first tournament since he won at Wimbledon, beat first-year pro Malivai Washington, 6-2, 6-4. “It’s tough to play the first match after you won Wimbledon,” said Edberg, who helped to draw a sellout crowd of 7,866 to the evening session. “Usually, you’re on a high for quite some time. Now, you have to get down to basics and start working again. But I was quite pleased.” . . . Third-seeded Pete Sampras beat Rick Leach, 7-5, 6-3.