Tennis Roundup : Lendl Overcomes Sluggish Start to Beat Gilbert

Ivan Lendl, playing at less than his best, was still plenty good enough to survive a shaky start and defeat Brad Gilbert, 6-2, 7-6, in Sunday’s final of the $350,000 Volvo Chicago tennis tournament.

“I was trying hard, but I wasn’t playing with a game plan,” said the No. 1-ranked Lendl, who was coming off a late Saturday night victory in which he had to hold off two match points against Tim Mayotte. “That’s why you saw so many strains in my matches this week.

“I just hit the ball hard, and if it goes in, it goes in, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”

But Gilbert failed to capitalize on Lendl’s lethargic start. Ranked 20th in the world, Gilbert lost his opening service game despite delivering two of the five aces and one of five service winners he had in the match.

Lendl was handed a 3-1 lead in the first set after Gilbert, who was serving, lost the last four points of the fourth game. Three of those points came on unforced errors.

Lendl rolled quickly to a 5-2 lead, then served for the set and won it with a backhand passing shot. And when he broke Gilbert in the opening game of the second set, Lendl appeared on the fast track toward the $60,000 first-place prize.

But Gilbert, who had lost all 14 previous meetings against Lendl, broke back in the fourth. He then held serve in the fifth game after winning an exchange of volleys and broke Lendl again in the sixth game to take a 4-2 lead.

“For a stretch there (in the second set), he missed some groundstrokes where he hadn’t missed any for the first set and a half,” Gilbert said. “The problem was I started making some errors, too.

“As things turned out, that seventh game of the second set was huge.”

In that game, Lendl capitalized on Gilbert’s three unforced errors to get a break.

Lendl then drew even, at 4-4, and the match stayed on service to go into the tiebreaker.

The first three points of the tiebreaker went to Lendl, who rolled quickly to a 6-3 advantage, before winning the match with a cleverly disguised half-volley on the forehand side.

Top-ranked Steffi Graf overpowered fifth-ranked Pam Shriver, 6-2, 6-0, at the Euro-America’s Cup team tournament at Auburn Hills, Mich.

Europe finished the tournament with a 46-1 victory over the United States when Larisa Savchenko of the Soviet Union won by injury default over Tracy Austin of Rolling Hills, Calif. Austin suffered a pulled hip muscle in the fourth game of the second set with Savchenko leading 6-3, 2-2.

Though Graf has been bothered by a knee injury, there was no stopping her against Shriver.

The 19-year-old West German opened the match with two aces, prompting Shriver to signal a mock timeout like a basketball coach. Graf recorded a total of four aces and 15 service winners.

Shriver not only had difficulty with Graf’s serve, but also had trouble with her own, double-faulting seven times including four in the second set.

Graf won the first three games and never trailed. She broke Shriver’s serve six times. The match lasted 53 minutes.

Shriver, 26, fell behind 30-40 on her first two services of the second set but prevented Graf from attaining set point seven times before losing the sets.

Shriver’s best moments were two nifty drop shots and an incredible backhand save at the net, but they were far too few to match the relentless power of Graf.

The Americans earned their only point of the tournament when Amy Frazier of Rochester Hills, Mich., defeated Austrian Petra Ritter, 6-0, 6-2, Friday in the competition’s only junior match.

Second-seeded Jakob Hlasek of Switzerland won the Nabisco Grand Prix championships at Rotterdam, Netherlands, beating seventh-seeded Anders Jarryd of Sweden, 6-1, 7-5.

It was Hlasek’s third tournament title of the season on the Grand Prix circuit. In Saturday’s semifinals, he ousted third-seeded Yannick Noah of France.

Jarryd showed signs of strain in the final, and his performance was unimpressive after his steady play in the earlier matches. The Swede defeated sixth-seeded Darren Cahill of Australia in the semifinals.

Top-seeded Luiz Mattar of Brazil, ranked 55th in the world, defeated American Jimmy Brown, 7-6, 6-4, to win the $130,000 Chevrolet tournament in a 2-hour final at Sao Paulo, Brazil.