Lendl struggles through to third round

Press, 29 May 1982, Page 64

Lendl struggles through to third round

NZPA-Reuter Paris In a match interrupted by fading light, the top seed, Ivan Lendl, managed to batter his way through to the third round of the French Open tennis championships, in Paris yesterday. Despite determined opposition from a French teenager, Thierry Tulasne, Lendl finally scraped through, 7-6, 7-5, 7-6. The fifth seed, Vitas Gerulaitis, continued his campaign with a competent 6-1, 6-2, 6-0 second round victory over Bernard Boileau, of Belgium. Andres Gomez, of Ecuador, seeded ninth in the

men’s singles and increasingly making his presence felt on tbe international circuit — he won the Italian Open earlier this month — beat Carlos Costellan, of Argentina, 6-7, 6-4, 6-1, 7-5. Jimmy Connors, who has won every Grand Slam trophy but the French Open, was in impeccable form against Jan Gunnarson, of Sweden, winning 6-2, 6-0, 6-2. After his match Connors said: "It is important for me to win here because people think I can’t win on clay. In fact, I enjoy slipping and sliding around.” Yannick Noah, the French No. 1, who is seeded eighth,

bad no problems in his 6-0, 63, 6-1 win over Terry Moor, of the United Stales, but the . tenth seed, Hungary’s Balazs Taroczy, was forced out in the second round after a gruelling five-setter against a little-known Czechoslovakian player, Pavel Slozil. Slozil, rated sixty-fourth on the Association of Tennis Professionals computer ranking, won a four-hour battle, 3-6, 7-6, 7-5, 6-7, 6-3. And while his wife, Chris, was winning her match, Britain’s John Lloyd, who came through from the qualifiers for these championships, was battling against

West Germany’s Klaus Eberhard. Lloyd played determined, committed tennis to win a five-set battle 2-6, 6-3, 7-6, 46, 6-3. In the women’s championships the ninth seed, Bettina Bunge, of West Germany, was bundled out of the tournament by Zina Garrison, an American teen-ager playing her first-ever Grand Slam tournament. The United States-based West german Federation Cup player, just two weeks short of her twentieth birthday, crashed 1-6, 7-6, 6-4, to Garrison, despite having a match point in the second set.

Martina Navratilova, of the United States, seeded second among the women, blasted aside the challenge of a fellow American, Candi Reynolds, with a blistering 61, 6-1, win that took her exactly 47 minutes. Kathy Rinaldi, the No. 15 seed, had little trouble in her 6-2, 6-1, win over another fellow American, Julie Harrington. Earlier in the day, the fifth seed, Hana Mandlikova, cruised to a comfortable — if slightly embarrassing — win over Betty Stove, of the Netherlands, her coach for the last two years. Mandlikova, last year’s

champion, won 6-3, 6-4. Chris Evert Lloyd, the top seed for the women’s title she has won four times, swept aside the third-round challenge of her fellow American, Kim Steinmetz, yesterday. Lloyd was in top form as she beat the 25-year-old from St Louis, 6-2, 6-1, to join a fellow American, Anne Smith, and Rumania’s Lucia Romanov in the fourth round. Smith beat Czechoslovakia’s Michaela Pazderova, 6-1, 6-2, while Romanov ended the challenge of the tenth seed, Billie Jean King, with a 6-3, 6-4.