McEnroe Show Goes Stagnant : Australian Open: Ferreira has 15 aces to beat him. Seles wins; Sabatini is upset.

Slow balls, stagnant air and tired legs wiped John McEnroe out of the Australian Open quarterfinals just as surely as the powerful serving and nearly flawless play of South Africa’s Wayne Ferreira.

McEnroe, in perhaps his last Australian Open match, did not come close to the elegant strokes and dramatic rallies of his earlier victories over Boris Becker and Emilio Sanchez. He didn’t rage at linesmen or throw his racket as he did two years ago.

Rather, he went quietly, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4, Wednesday night, with Ferreira serving 15 aces to McEnroe’s two and putting away 30 clean winners to McEnroe’s six.

“The bottom line,” McEnroe said, “is he just outplayed me.”

In the women’s semifinals Thursday, top-seeded Monica Seles swept Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, 6-2, 6-2, then Mary Joe Fernandez overwhelmed Gabriela Sabatini, 6-1, 6-4.

For McEnroe’s match Wednesday, the retractable roof was closed for the first time this year. In the warm, damp and still air of the stadium, the balls moved heavily and sat up perfectly for Ferreira to blast away from the baseline and negate McEnroe’s chip and charge tactics.

“The ball just didn’t seem to have quite the same zip as it would have in a drier atmosphere,” McEnroe said. “It just got stale, and it just wasn’t moving quite as quickly.”

Ferreira, a 20-year-old ranked No. 46 in his fourth year as a pro, agreed with McEnroe.

“I felt the ball was coming really slowly,” said Ferreira, who next plays No. 1 Stefan Edberg in the semifinals. “Every time I was preparing for a shot, I felt that I was a little bit too early for everything. I just got to everything a lot quicker.”

McEnroe had two break points in Ferreira’s first service game, but he had only one other break point the rest of the match. Ferreira held that first service game by getting an ace on game point. It was the first of eight games that Ferreira clinched with an ace, and the first of 10 consecutive games in which he served at least one ace.

McEnroe was broken only once in each set, but without getting a break back, it didn’t help.

“He wasn’t overawed by the situation, and on top of that he played great tennis,” McEnroe said. “He mixed up his serves so well. . . . It just felt like one of those days where it seemed I had to climb the mountain.”

McEnroe had two days’ rest after his five-set, nearly five-hour match against Sanchez, a duel that was so draining that McEnroe requested an intravenous drip afterward to rehydrate his body.

“I kept telling myself to hang in there, that something good would happen, because in previous matches that had been the case. I expected sooner or later something would turn around. But I just couldn’t get over the hump to break his serve. I don’t think I was playing badly. I just wasn’t able to kick it up another gear. Maybe I was flat.”

Seles was just plain pleased. “I definitely hit much better than any other match,” she said. “At least I was happy with my serve. As the tournament started I wasn’t feeling I was playing great tennis. But I’ve improved each match.”

The high moment for Sanchez Vicario came in the first game of the match, when she broke Seles at love. But Seles broke right back, and at 2-2 went on a streak to win seven consecutive games.

“She had more confidence as the match went on, and she started hitting more winners,” Sanchez Vicario said. “I have to improve my serve to play against Monica. She just controlled the points better than me.”

In contrast to Seles’ dominating victory from the baseline, Fernandez mixed up her shots as well as Sabatini did in winning the 1990 U.S. Open.

Fernandez, a 20-year-old Floridian, said she thought about her straight-sets loss to No. 3 Sabatini two weeks ago on the hard courts of a tuneup tournament in Sydney.

“I said I had to do something drastically different. I tried to attack a lot and come in a lot,” Fernandez said. “I played one way all my life, and it’s hard to change your mentality.”

Fernandez played almost effortlessly in the quick first set, following in approach shots to Sabatini’s backhand, and putting away volleys and overheads. She broke Sabatini to 2-1 in the second set with a typical sequence of shots--forehand approach, backhand, forehand volley cross-court.