Days of Wine and Old Glory : Tennis: McEnroe defeats Fred Stolle’s 20-year-old son, and Connors beats 23-year-old Krickstein.

John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, the last of a vintage crop of tennis players from the 1970s, are rolling around on a lot of palates at Wimbledon these days. They have been the fine wine of the first week of this well-aged tournament.

Each won a second-round match Saturday. Each played some dazzling tennis to do so. And each met, and charmed, the media afterward.

It is as if tennis--normally a young person’s game--has rediscovered the charms of adulthood in the persons of McEnroe and Connors, ages 32 and soon-to-be 39. If this was supposed to be the year for the passing of the guard of these two, they haven’t been informed. Both are still standing steadfast at their appointed tennis stations, chins up, rackets on shoulders.

McEnroe, playing on Centre Court, defeated Sandon Stolle, 7-6 (9-7), 5-7, 6-0, 7-6 (9-7). Stolle is the 20-year-old son of former Australian tennis great Fred Stolle, who lost in three Wimbledon finals and Saturday worked his son’s match for Australian television, a match in which McEnroe was vintage McEnroe.

Connors, playing out on Show Court No. 14, where he spent much of last year as an injured player and newly signed NBC broadcaster, restlessly watching from a TV deck above, defeated Aaron Krickstein, 6-3, 6-2, 6-3. Krickstein is a 23-year-old from the Nick Bollettieri tennis production line in Florida, a la Andre Agassi, and has been playing on the tour for eight years with seven titles. Saturday, he faced a vintage Connors.

With both McEnroe and Connors, the winds of time haven’t extinguished any of their fire. Between them, they have five Wimbledon titles (McEnroe three), and each is acting as if that isn’t enough.

McEnroe began against Stolle as he often does, grousing and grumbling and talking himself through the early stages, almost as if he were trying to persuade his body to catch up to his mind’s desires. He won a tough first-set tiebreaker, then struggled again in the second, resorting to what he frequently has used over the years to get himself going: verbal abuse.

At one point in the second set, he had failed on a total of 13 break points and flailed away at his service returns. Stolle ended up getting the service break and won the second set. It was at that point, Stolle said, that he noticed where his father was broadcasting from.

“I looked around after I won the second set, and I saw him stand up and put his arms up,” Stolle said. “I figured that had to be him.”

McEnroe was asked if he, too, had seen his friend Fred Stolle at that moment.

“No, I didn’t. I missed that,” McEnroe said. “All I saw was my wife (Tatum) with her head down, in total disgust.”

In the third set, Tatum had nothing to be disgusted with. The McEnroe of old suddenly showed up, dropping soft volleys into unreturnable areas and spraying serves to all corners of the box.

In the fourth set, Stolle reloaded and gave McEnroe all he could handle. But in the deciding tiebreaker, the McEnroe magic was there when it had to be. At 7-7, he served an ace. At 7-8, with Stolle serving on match point, McEnroe ran down a deep volley to his forehand side and cranked it crosscourt past Stolle before the youngster could as much as twitch.

Afterward, McEnroe said: “I’m just going to take this one match at a time and see what happens. Who knows, if I get through my next round, then I will be playing Edberg in the Round of 16.”

Connors dashed through Krickstein like a man who had a commitment to go on TV, which he did.

His performance was very much like so many others over the years. He cruised through the first two sets and started the third with a leaping skyhook overhead that barely ticked the line and angled away from Krickstein’s backhand. He survived two break points early in the set and then jumped all over his opponent’s serve at 3-5, converting his second match point after crushing a forehand return barely long at 15-40.

The victory marked the fifth of his career against Krickstein in a head-to-head series in which Connors has lost only one set.

And as he finished and shook Krickstein’s hand at the net, dozens of fans swarmed from the crowd to seek his autograph in a scene very uncharacteristic of the law and order and restraint of Wimbledon.

Connors, a wild-card entry, reiterated how much fun he was having, playing here for the 19th time but with so much less pressure on him to win.

“It’s kind of nice, playing so many of these guys like they played me all those years,” he said. “Now, I can just go out there with nothing to worry about, serve it up and hit it back and forth as hard as I can. If it goes in, well . . . “

He joked that he was hoping they might change the men’s singles to best-of-three sets because of the rain, and when asked if he could ever recall children and adults swarming on him for autographs at Wimbledon, he said, “They all seem like children to me now.”

He added that while his son Brett, 12, had had a chance to see him play in his prime, he hoped that he could play long enough for his daughter, Aubree-Leigh, 5, to see him and understand it a little better.

Nobody asked whether he was thinking about his grandchildren as spectators.