Cheney Loses His Shirt, but Wins Semifinal : Tennis: After taking a break to change, he finishes Cornell in national 45 tournament.

Steve Cornell didn’t mind that four of the past five sets he’d played had resulted in tiebreakers. He didn’t want to stop.

Not after his opponent, top-seeded Brian Cheney, double-faulted to lose the second-set tiebreaker in the semifinals of the U.S. Tennis Assn.’s national men’s 45 hard court championships Saturday.

Unseeded Cornell of Oakland, who lost the first set in a tiebreaker, was ready to start serving the third. But Cheney headed for the clubhouse to change his shirt, leaving Cornell standing at the fringes of the sun-scorched playing surface of the Westlake Tennis & Swim Club.

Cheney was gone for 10 minutes. When he returned, he played the final set as if he had done more than change his shirt. Cornell, who didn’t take shelter, withered.

Cheney advanced to today’s final with a 7-6 (7-3), 6-7 (9-7), 6-2 victory. “I don’t like to take that much of a break,” said Cornell, 45, who played on two NCAA championship teams at UCLA from 1969 to 1971. “And at the beginning of the third set, I wasn’t really in there, mentally.”

Cornell’s previous two matches had gone to three sets, but he said he didn’t notice any fatigue. “(But) maybe I was a little slower in (Saturday’) third set,” he said.

Cheney, 46, a Santa Monica native who lives in Chandler, Ariz., broke Cornell’s serve three times to take a 5-0 lead in the final set. Cheney could have closed it out, 6-0, but he double-faulted away his third service to make it 5-1, and Cornell held to make it 5-2.

Then Cheney put an exclamation point at the end of the 2 1/2-hour affair with a backhand volley, a service winner, a charging forehand and a running forehand volley. Love game, set and match.

“It would have been 6-0,” Cheney said. “At 30-all, I hit a good volley. (Cornell) came up and hit a backhand down the line. It was his only shot and I didn’t cover it really well. But he played well. He hit good volleys and deep ground strokes.”

In the second tiebreaker, Cornell was serving for the set at 6-4 when Cheney hit a backhand winner. Cheney rallied for a 7-6 lead but hit a backhand long on match point.

Cornell answered to lead, 8-7, and evened the match when Cheney double-faulted. But Cheney, a three-time NCAA quarterfinalist in singles at Arizona, dominated the third set.

Cheney will face Charlie Hoeveler of Ross, Calif., in the 10:30 a.m. final. Hoeveler defeated Cliff Price of Tulsa, Okla., 6-2, 7-5.