Look Who’s in the Semifinals : U.S. Open: Connors makes 4-6, 7-6, 6-4, 6-2 victory over Haarhuis look relatively easy. The 39-year-old gets Courier next.

He’s 39, his tennis expiration date has long since passed and he has been out way past his bedtime a few times the last few days, so what’s Jimmy Connors got himself into?

The semifinals of the U.S. Open. Make that the Jimmy Connors Open.

“It’s not over yet,” Connors said.

“Is this for real?”

Hey, it’s a wacky business. How else can you explain a relic such as Connors, who made his first Open semifinals in 1974 at age 22, getting there again Thursday night, posting a surprisingly easy 4-6, 7-6 (7-3), 6-4, 6-2 victory over Paul Haarhuis?

It took Connors 2 hours 55 minutes to complete his 17-year cycle and a place in Saturday’s semifinals against Jim Courier.

This can’t go on, can it? Haarhuis shrugged.

“He’s gone to the semis, so anything’s possible, I think,” Haarhuis said.

A crowd of Stadium Court 19,523 seemed to agree. They watched intently just as Connors did, staring at a Haarhuis backhand up the line that went wide at match point to end it.

As usual, Connors celebrated, but he nearly stumbled into the net. Connors caught himself, shook hands with Haarhuis and busily packed his bags.

Haarhuis put his rackets away quicker than Connors and tried to get off the court as fast as possible, but was held up for an on-court television interview before reaching the tunnel. Just then, Connors chose to leave amid a standing ovation and the television camera shifted to Connors while Haarhuis was forced to stand idly by in the mob scene.

“The crowd was all right, it didn’t bother me,” Haarhuis said. “What bothered me most wasJimmy Connors.”

Haarhuis, a 25-year-old Dutchman, who went to school at Florida State, came in with a semi-impressive U.S. Open resume: a second-round upset of John McEnroe in 1989 and a third-round upset of Boris Becker last week.

Connors popped a volley long to drop the first set but came back to even the match by winning a second-set tiebreaker after spoiling Haarhuis’ plans to go two sets up when he broke serve for 5-5.

The key point was at 30-40 when Connors lofted four consecutive lobs at Haarhuis, who didn’t put any of them away. Connors eventually lured Haarhuis to the net and breezed a backhand passing shot down the line for the break.

“Once I got back into the set, well, I didn’t do anything great, but that lifted my entire game,” Connors said.

“The whole match in my opinion was on that one point. My whole game, my whole attitude and everything just seemed to sort of roll along.”

Connors sacked the third set, then closed out the match with a 35-minute fourth set. Near the end, Connors said, he was seeing the ball as well as he had in his career.

“The ball looked like a basketball to me,” he said after becoming the oldest Open semifinalist since Ken Rosewall in 1974.

Connors came to the net 56 times and won 42 points, slapped 44 winners and withstood 10 aces by Haarhuis. Afterward, Connors sounded as if his confidence was growing.

“The only way it’s going to be all over is for somebody to step up and beat me,” he said. “And they’re going to have to play darned good tennis to do that.”

* DETHRONED: Jim Courier defeats defending champion Pete Sampras, 6-2, 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (7-5), in a quarterfinal match. Ivan Lendl also reaches the semifinals with a five-set victory over Michael Stich. C12