TENNIS ROUNDUP : Becker Defeats Korda for Swiss Indoor Title

Second-seeded Boris Becker got off to a slow start, then hit his stride during the second set and beat top-seeded Petr Korda, 3-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4, for the Swiss Indoor title at Basel on Sunday.

“It’s a great feeling to finally win a tournament again,” said Becker, who had not won in nearly seven months.

“I was off form in the first set, but suddenly something happened and I was able to win the next three sets.”

Korda, who has climbed rapidly to No. 7 in the rankings, played well all week despite flu. And he started off strong on Sunday, winning the first set in 30 minutes. But Becker dominated after that.

Becker had 66 aces in the tournament.

It was Becker’s third title of the year. He won the World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam on March 1 and the Donnay International in Brussels on Feb. 16.

Becker, a three-time Wimbledon champion, earned $100,800, increasing his winnings to nearly $10 million, surpassed only by Ivan Lendl, John McEnroe and Stefan Edberg.

“It was about time,” Becker said.

Steffi Graf defeated Jana Novotna of Czechoslovakia, 6-3, 1-6, 6-4, and won the Volkswagen Grand Prix at Leipzig, Germany.

Graf, ranked No. 2 in the world, needed 1 hour 31 minutes to beat Novotna.

Both players had trouble with their serves throughout the match, repeatedly breaking each other. For a while, Novotna’s aggressive play appeared to gain her the upper hand as she easily won the second set.

But Graf hung on, and when Novotna’s serve turned erratic again with the score 5-4 during the last set, the German player wrapped it up with her first match-point opportunity.

Manuela Maleeva-Fragniere won the Bayonne Open in France for the second consecutive year, beating Nathalie Tauziat, 6-7 (7-4), 6-2, 6-3.

It was the top-seeded Maleeva-Fragniere’s first tournament victory of the year. She was a semifinalist in the U.S. Open last month.

Maleeva-Fragniere won five games in a row to win the second set. She then opened a 5-1 lead during the third set before Tauziat, the 1990 winner and home club pro, managed a brief comeback.

Unseeded Shaun Stafford scored her second upset in as many days and won the Taiwan Open in Taipei with a 6-1, 6-3 victory over second-seeded Ann Grossman.

It was the first professional tournament victory for the 25-year-old from Gainesville, Fla.

Sergi Bruguera beat Emilio Sanchez, 6-1, 6-3, in an all-Spanish final to win the Internazionali di Sicilia clay court tournament in Palermo, Sicily.

It was the first victory for Bruguera over Sanchez in six matches between the two.

Unseeded Guillaume Raoux of France defeated Danish teen-ager Kenneth Carlsen, 6-4, 7-6 (12-10), and won the Queensland Open in Brisbane, Australia.

John McEnroe beat Andre Agassi, 7-5, 3-6, 6-3, in an exhibition at the National Tennis Center in Melbourne, Australia. The match was a tuneup for the $1.1-million Sydney Indoor championship, which begins today.