Will 13th Time Be Lucky for Lendl? : Wimbledon: He rallies to beat Stolle in five sets and advance to the fourth round against Ivanisevic.

He’s 32, he’s ranked as low as he has been in more than a decade, he has never won Wimbledon, he’s back for a 13th try and he still looks as if somebody sentenced him to a grass prison.

But here he is again, the gaunt presence known as Ivan Lendl.

Welcome to the fourth round, Ivan.

In the fifth set Friday against 21-year-old Sandon Stolle, Lendl answered the call of the wile. He summoned just enough of the local knowledge culled from more than a decade of stalking the elusive silver trophy and walked off a winner, 6-3, 1-6, 2-6, 6-3, 7-5.

Of course, his other 12 visits to the All England Club have ended in a distressingly familiar fashion. Head bowed, face red, Lendl trudges off the court in defeat. In 1989, for instance, he blew a fourth-set lead to Boris Becker in the semifinals, then walked off the court without bowing to the royal box.

True, it was a breach of etiquette, but after all Lendl has been through here, it was also a perfectly understandable reaction to grass-court tennis, to which he once confessed an allergy.

He looked fairly healthy against Stolle, son of three-time Wimbledon runner-up Fred Stolle. Lendl pulled out the big shots at just the right moment in the deciding set.

He evened the match at 5-5 with three aces and a service winner, then closed it out by breaking Stolle at 15 on the strength of three super-sharp winners that skidded across the grass and hid in the shadows of Court 1.

So Lendl, seeded 10th, moved on to a fourth-round match with eighth-seeded Goran Ivanisevic, the left-handed serving machine who pumped out 22 aces in a 7-6 (7-4), 6-4, 6-4 victory over Marc Rosset of Switzerland.

Lendl said he has a plan for handling Ivanisevic’s serve.

“If he hits an ace, he hits an ace,” he said. “If I get a swing at it, I swing at it. That’s all I can do.”

Lendl’s five-set victory was his first of the year and improved his Wimbledon record to 47-12. A year ago at Wimbledon, he survived a five-set match with MaliVai Washington, but lost to David Wheaton in the third round. It was Lendl’s earliest Grand Slam defeat since he lost in the first round of the 1981 Wimbledon.

That was, of course, until Lendl lost to Jaime Oncins in the second round of the French Open three weeks ago and dropped to a 12-year low of No. 11 in the rankings.

But Lendl is a three-time French Open champion and the spectators who pull for a noble loser seem to have adopted him this year.

“Not only here, but generally everywhere,” Lendl characterized the reaction of the British fans. “I think the tendency is, once a top player who has been dominating starts to lose some, they all of a sudden want the old-timer to start winning again. If you’re winning all the time, they want an upset.”

On a mostly gray but still dry Friday, upsets were few. Seventh-seeded Mary Joe Fernandez injured her leg and lost to Amy Frazier, 6-3, 6-3, 11th-seeded Richard Krajicek lost to Arnaud Boetsch in four sets, and 13th-seeded Brad Gilbert was beaten by Wally Masur in five.

But the big names advanced to the fourth round with little trouble, led by Monica Seles, who power-stroked her way past Laura Gildemeister, 6-4, 6-1.

Stefan Edberg, Michael Stich and Pete Sampras scored straight-set victories, Edberg’s 6-1, 6-0, 6-2 decision over Grant Stafford heralding his sixth consecutive fourth-round appearance.

Edberg will next play Henrik Holm, the Swedish qualifier who got past Alexander Volkov. Stich breezed past Magnus Larsson, 6-4, 6-1, 6-3, and meets Masur. Sampras beat Scott Davis, 6-1, 6-0, 6-2, and earned a fourth-round date with Boetsch.

“I’m not thinking about winning the tournament quite yet,” Sampras said. “But the way I’m playing right now, I feel pretty good about my chances when I play (Boetsch).

Ivanisevic, who has 73 aces in three matches, said he is looking forward to playing Lendl.

“I’m going to come to the court and give my best and try to serve 40 aces,” he said.

That would probably be bad news for Lendl, who has had more than his share on the finely manicured grass of the All England Club. And how beatable is Lendl on grass?

“He’s very beatable,” Ivanisevic said.

In Lendl’s Wimbledon history, there are a dozen others who know that.