Edberg Gets Cut Down for Semifinal : Davis Cup: Veteran Swede will not play singles against U.S. Enqvist and Wilander will face Agassi and Sampras.

Thanks to the notoriously harsh weather in Palm Springs, the already favored U.S. team received an extra boost here Thursday for its semifinal Davis Cup tennis match against Sweden.

Harsh weather in Palm Springs?

“Yeah, that’s where I caught my cold,” said Swedish star Stefan Edberg, who trained there for more than a week before this weekend’s competition. “It’s so nice there every day, so hot. But you practice and you get hot and then you go into the air conditioning and then back out into the hot and. . . .”

A cough interrupted Edberg’s sentence, just as it had killed his chance to play singles for his country.

That means the defending champion Swedes, in order to even reach the final against the winner of the Germany-Russia semifinal being played this weekend in Moscow, will use Thomas Enqvist and Mats Wilander against a U.S. team that includes the top two singles players in the world, Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras.

Enqvist is No. 8, and he was going to be Sweden’s top threat to Agassi and Sampras, anyway. But Wilander, the former No. 1 player who, at 31, is in the second year of a comeback that has taken him much higher than many expected, is still well down the ranking list at No. 47 and was projected, before Edberg’s clash with the Palm Springs elements, as a likely spectator here this weekend.

“I just found out about it this morning, and, yes, I was a little surprised,” said Wilander, who is 28 spots lower than the No. 19 Edberg. “The feeling was that, to have Stefan play three matches, in this heat and at this altitude--and with his cold--might be too much.

“I realize that I’m definitely an underdog, that on paper, I have no chance. But I also remember that I lost Davis Cup matches to lower-ranked players when I was No. 1.”

Thursday’s draw put Wilander in today’s second match against Agassi. Enqvist will play Sampras in the opener. Edberg will play doubles with Jonas Bjorkman on Saturday against Todd Martin and Jonathan Stark, then the teams’ No. 1 players, Enqvist and Agassi, will play the first match Sunday, followed by Wilander and Sampras.

The Sunday matches will be meaningless, if U.S. captain Tom Gullikson and his team have their way.

“We just want the three [points],” Gullikson said. “That’s all we’re thinking about.”

To which Sampras added, “I like our chances.”

So do the Las Vegas oddsmakers, who, never missing an opportunity to stir up a little action, chose the end of a press luncheon to remind reporters that gambling is legal here and that the odds were such and such on this match and such and such on that one. Suffice it to say that Wilander’s assessment of his chances pretty well mirrored the oddsmakers’ assessment of Sweden’s.

Also suffice it to say that, before the weekend is over, somebody here will be taking over-under action on Sampras’ aces and Agassi’s forehand passing shots.

The matches will be played on an outdoor hard court in a tennis stadium behind Caesars Palace. Seating capacity is 13,000, and they were still selling some individual session tickets Thursday afternoon.

Agassi’s appearance here will be his first real championship level participation in his hometown, and he said Thursday that he was proud that the event was here and hoped that the city’s response might lead to a regular tour stop.

But Agassi’s plugs for his city were routine compared to that of Brian Tobin, president of the International Tennis Federation, who spoke at a ceremony before the draw and said, “The other Davis Cup semifinal this weekend is Germany vs. Russia in Moscow. I had a tough call as to which match I wanted to come and see, so here I am.”

So much for tennis glasnost.

Tennis Notes

If the United States beats Sweden, it will play the Davis Cup final against either Germany or Russia on the road Dec. 1-3. Davis Cup home-court advantage is determined simply by alternating the hosts, no matter how long it has been between meetings. Germany and the United States last met at Kansas City in the 1991 semifinals. The United States and Russia have never played, so there was a drawing to determine the team getting to play host first. . . . Mats Wilander said he has a definite game plan against Andre Agassi. Actually, two game plans. “Plan A is to hit all aces and winners off service returns,” Wilander said. “If that doesn’t work, I go to plan B, and Plan B is a secret.”

Agassi was asked one of those off-the-wall questions at a news conference Thursday, about whether he had taken to heart some of the motivational information about winning tennis outlined in Jimmy Connors’ book. “When it comes to authors,” Agassi said, “I prefer C.S. Lewis to Jimmy Connors.”