Wilander Has Night on Town : Tennis: Former Swedish star defeats Horst Skoff, 6-4, 6-4, in first round of at Indian Wells tournament.

Fittingly, they let an elder statesman do the honors on the first-ever evening session at the Newsweek Champions Cup here Monday. Such an occasion demanded a quality master of ceremonies, and Mats Wilander handled the duties like the star he is.

Make that was.

Wilander, once the greatest in the game and now, at 29, still an occasional force to be reckoned with, properly christened night tennis in the desert with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Austrian Horst Skoff.

The evening session drew 5,471, and combined with the 9,090 that came for the regular day session gave the tournament a total of 14,561, its biggest single-day attendance. Because this is the first time organizers have had split sessions here, each day through Friday is likely to top that mark, with Saturday and Sunday day-only sessions limited to the 10,500 stadium capacity level. The 14,561 total compares well with early-week attendance draws for the U.S. Open, which are usually in the low 20,000 range.

No. 82 Skoff had to play through a qualifying tournament to get into the main draw here. But he also is a tour veteran, who once defeated Wilander in a 6-hour 3-minute Davis Cup match in 1989.

If anything, Wilander probably would have been considered the underdog. He is ranked No. 231 in the world now. The five players ranked directly above him are Oliver Gross, Chris Pridham, Louis Gloria, Miguel Pastura and Simon Touzil. Last week, in a first-round match at Scottsdale, Ariz., the kind of tour stop that Wilander used to zip through, he lost to somebody named Grant Stafford.

But Wilander’s participation on the ATP Tour is not one of those pathetic tales of athlete-hangs-on-too-long. He has won seven Grand Slams, as many as Pete Sampras and Jim Courier combined. But his quest is not particularly for an eighth, nor for a return to the No. 1 spot that he held for much of 1988 and ’89.

“I play now to play, not just to win,” he said. “To be No. 1 or 2, you have to compete, to play to win. There’s no other way you can do it, no other way you can feel about it.”

Nor is it that Wilander is coming out occasionally on the tour, grabbing wild cards into tournaments and simply taking up space. He enjoys winning, enjoyed his victory over Skoff. But he also knows he has been there, didn’t like it enough to keep fighting for it, and now looks upon his days of glamour and glory with perspective.

“After 1988, I just didn’t care anymore,” he said. “I never really decided that I was going to quit playing forever. I just decided that it wasn’t as important anymore. I’ve got a great family, and I know what I’ve done before.

“The main reason I’m playing now is for the days when it feels good, when I can put the ball on the racket in just the right spot, and when I can hit the ball to within a square foot of exactly where I want it. I play for those days when it still feels perfect, when there is a sense of mastery and I’m able to control it nearly to 100%.”

Wilander acknowledged that he had less than 100% control against Skoff.

After breaking Skoff at 4-5 of the first set with a nice slice backhand approach and a crisp forehand volley, then running off to a 3-0 lead in the second set, Wilander tightened. Serving for the match at 5-3, he let Skoff attack too much and ended up losing his serve. But Skoff returned the favor with a less-than-sparkling service game of his own, flapping a loose forehand wide on match point.

“I just tightened when I was serving for the match,” Wilander said. “It’s not that often that I am in that situation these days. It doesn’t matter how many years you’ve done it, if you are playing all the time, it is routine. If you aren’t, it is not.”

And if that means not winning, Wilander has a pet phrase for it.

“Life goes on,” he says.

Notes

Cedric Pioline of France, last year’s runner-up to Pete Sampras in the U.S. Open and the ninth-seeded player here, went out unceremoniously in the first round. He lost to Jonathan Stark, the former Stanford star, 6-4, 6-3, and looked listless in doing so. The two had played once before in a tournament final in Bolzano, Italy, last year, and Stark won that one in straight sets, too--his only tour title to date. Pioline, who has not played particularly well since his two-week run at Flushing Meadows, said there wasn’t much he could do because Stark hit it as hard as he could every time and approached the net. Pioline countered with a slowball serve that Stark labeled “a lollipop.” Spain.