Another day of tennis upsets

Press, 10 January 1987, Page 72

Another day of tennis upsets

PA Auckland An unseeded Australian, Carl Limberger, earned an unexpected place in the semi-finals at the $200,000 Benson and Hedges tennis open yesterday when he beat the fourth seed, Marcel Freeman, 6-2, 3-6, 6-4. In another day of upsets, Limberger earned a semi-final clash with Michiel Schapers, of the Netherlands. The other men’s singles semi-final will be between Derrick Rostagno, of the United States, and the top seed, Miloslav Mecir, of Czechoslovakia. Mecir beat the only re-

maining New Zealander, Bruce Derlin, 6-2, 6-2, but said he was surprised at the strength of Derlin’s baseline play. Schapers’ quarter-final against Bud Schultz, last year’s top seed, could have gone either way and only a few errors in the final set cost Schultz the match 6-7 (3-7), 6-2, 4-6. But the match of the day was undoubtedly the one between Rostagno and India’s Ramesh Krishnan. The three-setter between the fifth-seeded American and thirdseeded Indian kept the largest crowd of the week

glued to their seats for 2 hours and 41 minutes. But after the American had won the first set with relative ease in 33 minutes, 6-3, there was no indication that Krishnan could make such a gallant comeback to take the second set in the tiebreaker, 7-5, and fight back from 2-4 down in the third to extend the match. Another 12 games had to be played before Rostagno could claim victory from a third set which lasted 79 minutes. It was not just the closeness of the score in the last two sets which set the match anart from most nf

the others played so far. Rostagno is an attacking player while Krishnan plays the same laid-back style as Mecir. Countering Rostagno’s full-blooded drives and volleys were the fine touch play and excellent placements of Krishnan. Derlin made the most of his opportunity of playing a world top-10 player — he had. played Ivan Lendl before and had been overpowered — and sensibly decided to play from the baseline. In doing so, he was able to place a number of good passes against Mecir and avoid the humiliation of being passed himself each

time he went to the net. Results.— Men’s singles, quarterfinals: Miloslav Mecir (Czechoslovakia) beat Bruce Derlin (N.Z.), 6-2, 6-2; Derrick Rostagno (U.S.) beat Ramesh Krishnan (India), 63, 6-5 (5-7), 10-8; Carl Limberger (Aust.) beat Marcel Freeman (U.S.), 6-2, 3-6, 6-4; Michiel Schapers (Netherlands) beat Bud Schultz (U.S.), 7-6 (7-3), 2-6, 6-4. Men’s doubles, quarter-, finals: Carl Limberger Mark Woodforde (Aust.) beat Karl Richter and Rick Rudeen (U.S.), 6-4, 6-3; Gilad Bloom (Israel) and Jonny Levin (U.S.) beat Brett Steven and David Mustard, (N.Z.) 64, 6-7 (1-7), 6-3.