Cash, Evert in tennis finals

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 92

Cash, Evert in tennis finals

NZPA-Reuter Melbourne

Pat Cash left the grand slam hopes of Ivan Lendl in ruins after beating the world No. 1 in five sets in the Australian Open tennis semi-finals yesterday.

Cash disposed of the best hardcourt player in the world 6-4, 2-6, 6-2, 4-6, 6-2, after nearly four hours of thrilling tennis which buried for ever talk that the Wimbledon champion can only operate on grass.

The Melbourne-born 22-year-old now plays Mats Wilander in the final.

Wilander, twice winner of the Open title, earlier beat the defending champion and fellow Swede Stefan Edberg 6-0, 6-7, 63, 3-6, 6-1.

Cash’s victory is his third over Lendl in grand slam tournaments during the past 12 months. Lendl, who had set his sights on winning all four major championships in 1988, was defeated in three sets in the Wimbledon final and in four in last year’s Australian Open semifinal.

In his match Edberg, winner in Melbourne in 1985 and 1987, started disastrously, losing the first set 6-0 as Wilander chased and harried his fellow-Swede to distraction.

Despite raising his game significantly to take the second set on a tiebreak, the second seeded Edberg never found his serve and volleying rhythm.

One break in the third set earned the third seeded Wilander a 2-1 lead but Edberg took the fourth as Wilander suffered some bad luck on crucial points. Edberg looked to be playing himself back into something like his best form as the match, the first between the two players to go to five sets, entered its fourth hour.

Edberg’s eleventh footfault on break point gave Wilander a vital 2-0 lead in the final set. Edberg appeared almost to give up, relinquishing the final set 6-1 on the first match point. Meanwhile, Chris Evert ended the longest drought of her career in the most satisfying way possible.

Her 6-2, 7-5, defeat of great rival Martina Navratilova in the semifinals, the seventy-sixth episode of the longest running soap opera in tennis, put her in a grand slam final for the first time in 20 months.

Evert, aged 33, ended 1987 depressed by her fall to No. 3 behind the West German teenager, Steffi Graf, whom she faces in today’s final, and Navratilova, plus her failure to reach a grand slam final for the first time since 1971.

But victory over Navratilova, which put her 40-36 behind in the series, also left her elated. “My record shows whenever I’m down I bounce back,” said Evert, winner of 18 grand slam singles titles and poised

to make her thirty-fourth appearance in a major final. “It means a lot but we don’t get ecstatic when we beat each other because we are such good friends,” said Evert, who will have drawn confidence from Graf’s inconsistency in her 6-2, 6-3, victory over compatriot Claudia Kohde-Kilsch in a less distinguished first semi-final. Semi-final results. — Men’s singles: 3-Mats Wilander (Sweden) beat 2Stefan Edberg (Sweden) 6-0, 6-7 (7-5), 6-3, 3-6, 6-1; 4-Pat Cash (Australia) beat 1-Ivan Lendl (Czechoslavakia) 6-4, 26, 6-2, 4-6, 6-2. Women’s singles: Chris Evert (U.S.) beat Martina Navratilova (U.S.) 6-2, 7-5; Steffi Graf (W. Germany) beat Claudia Kohde-Kilsch (W. Germany) 6-2, 6-3.