TENNIS ROUNDUP : Becker and John McEnroe Advance to Semifinal Match

Boris Becker and John McEnroe played well in victories Friday and will meet today in the semifinals of the $525,000 indoor tournament at Rotterdam.

Becker beat Patrick McEnroe, 6-3, 7-5. John McEnroe defeated Alex Antonitsch, 2-6, 6-3, 7-5. Antonitsch saved three match points before McEnroe finally won.

Alexander Volkov and Paul Haarhuis will play in the other semifinal.

Volkov scored a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Jan Siemerink, who upset Stefan Edberg Thursday.

In Friday’s only upset, Haarhuis beat Goran Prpic, 7-6 (7-5), 6-2.

Top-seeded Emilio Sanchez was upset by seventh-seeded Brad Gilbert, 6-3, 7-5, in the $260,000 Arizona men’s tennis championships at Scottsdale, Ariz., to complete a string of straight-set victories in the quarterfinals.

MaliVai Washington defeated Argentine Alberto Mancini, 6-3, 6-4, in the first of the two evening matches.

During the afternoon, No. 8-seeded Andrei Chesnokov won a war of nerves over Marc Rosset of Switzerland, 7-6 (9-7), 6-4, and, in an all-Italian match-up of unseeded players, Stefano Pescosolido ousted Cristiano Caratti, 6-2, 7-6 (7-2).

Washington, 22, of Swartz Creek, Mich., was the only winner in the first three singles matches to beat a higher-seeded player. Mancini, another 22-year-old hoping to rise to the top of the ATP Tour, was seeded fourth and came into the tournament ranked 22nd in the world to Washington’s 26th.

He breezed through the first set but took three match points to close out the match. The winning point was a wicked serve which Mancini returned into the net.

“I don’t think I made too many mistakes, and he was making a few,” Washington said.

Chesnokov, 26, had dropped from a career-high ranking of ninth in April 1991 to No. 40, and this marked his first advance past the opening round of a tour event this year.