TENNIS ROUNDUP : Navratilova Is in Tune at Eastbourne

Martina Navratilova, queen of grass-court tennis, fought off another young pretender to her throne Saturday, rallying from an early deficit to defeat Arantxa Sanchez Vicario.

Navratilova won, 6-4, 6-4, for her 10th championship at the $350,000 Eastbourne tournament, a tuneup event for Wimbledon. It was the 156th singles title of her career, leaving her one behind Chris Evert’s record.

Navratilova fell behind, 4-1, in the first set to a mixture of lobs, drop shots and sharp volleys, but then increased her pressure at the net to win the next five games.

“At 4-1, I thought I’d better get my little behind in gear or I’d be in trouble,” said Navratilova, who will be seeking a 10th title at Wimbledon, which starts Monday. “If I was going to keep up that standard of serving, there was plenty of room for worry.”

Navratilova, who earned $70,000, said she was rushing too much in the opening games and trying too hard for winners. She said she took control by calming down and waiting for Sanchez Vicario to make mistakes.

Sanchez Vicario, 19, complied, making repeated errors in the last five games of the first set and continuing her erratic play in the second set. Navratilova scored the only service break of the second set in the fifth game.

“In the second set, my first serve didn’t go in, so she put more pressure on my second serve,” said Sanchez Vicario, who has beaten Navratilova only once in eight tries. “I just have to put more first serves in.”

Sanchez Vicario, who won the French Open in 1989 and still considers herself “a specialist on clay,” had not dropped a set in reaching the final. Navratilova, 34, had lost only nine games in her five matches en route to the final.

Goran Ivanisevic served 10 aces in beating U.S. Open champion Pete Sampras, 6-4, 6-4, in the final of the Manchester Open grass-court tournament.

Ivanisevic, seeded second to defending champion Sampras, needed only 44 minutes to win the final tuneup for Wimbledon. He dropped only six points on his serve, including three double faults.

“There was nothing really I could do out there,” Sampras said. “I was doing everything I could to win, but he was just too good.”

The Yugoslav left-hander saw the victory as a confidence booster for Wimbledon. He reached the semifinals there last year.

“If I play like this I have a good chance to go very far. I’m not afraid of anyone,” he said.

But he pointed out that victory in Manchester is no guarantee for Wimbledon.

“Last year Pete won this tournament and lost in the first round at Wimbledon,” he said.

For Sampras, it could work the other way.

“I lost to Goran the week before the U.S. Open so I thought if I lost to him here I might win Wimbledon,” he said.

Jordi Arrese of Spain and Germany’s Carl Uwe Steeb won semifinal matches in straight sets in the clay-court Genoa, Italy, ATP tournament.

Arrese, seeded third, defeated unseeded Argentine Eduardo Masso, 7-6 (7-5), 6-3, and the seventh-seeded Steeb downed Austrian Thomas Muster, 7-5, 6-4.