TENNIS ROUNDUP : Graf, Novotna to Play for Title Again

Steffi Graf and Jana Novotna won their semifinal matches at the Volkswagen Grand Prix tournament Saturday at Leipzig, Germany, and will play for the title for the second consecutive year.

Graf, top seeded and defending champion, defeated Katerina Maleeva of Bulgaria, 6-1, 6-1.

Novotna, of Czechoslovakia, defeated countrywoman Helena Sukova, 6-3, 6-2.

Germany’s Graf has won 12 of 15 matches against Novotna, but Novatna has won three of the last six, including a 5-7, 6-4, 8-6 tiebreaker at the 1991 Australian Open.

Top-seeded Petr Korda of Czechoslovakia defeated Ivan Lendl, 6-4, 6-3, to advance to the final of the Swiss Indoors tournament against Boris Becker.

Becker, second seeded, beat Switzerland’s Marc Rosset, 6-2, 6-4, in the other semifinal at Basel.

Third-seeded Emilio Sanchez came from behind to defeat Renzo Furlan of Italy, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4, and join Sergi Bruguera in an all-Spanish final in the Internazionali di Sicilia clay-court tournament at Palermo. Sanchez trailed, 0-2, in the third set.

Bruguera, seeded second, defeated fourth-seeded Francisco Clavet, 6-1, 6-4.

Guillaume Raoux of France defeated Diego Nargiso of Italy, 6-3, 6-4, and Kenneth Carlsen of Denmark beat Thomas Hogstedt of Sweden 6-4, 6-1, in semifinal matches at the Queensland Open in Brisbane.

Unseeded Shaun Stafford upset top-seeded Amanda Coetzer of South Africa, 6-1, 6-3, to advance to today’s final of the Taiwan Women’s Tennis Open at Taipei.

Stafford will play second-seeded Ann Grossman, who defeated Nana Miyagi, 6-2, 3-0, after the Japanese player became ill and retired in the second set.