Wimbledon Roundup : Lloyd Makes a Brief (40-Minute) Appearance

WIMBLEDON, England â€”  Chris Evert Lloyd, shooting for her fourth Wimbledon singles championship, made her first 1985 appearance on Centre Court Thursday as brief as possible.

It took her a mere 40 minutes to beat Mary Lou Piatek, 6-1, 6-0, while losing just 22 points, seven in the second set.

Lloyd, who had suffered a stiff neck during practice last week, reported herself in 100% condition, and her performance proved it.

She swept through the first four games with the loss of only four points and duplicated the feat in four games of the second set. Piatek, ranked 60th in the world, was unable to hold a single service game.

“I felt comfortable today but feel I need some matches to get match-tough on grass,� Lloyd said.

Piatek probably wouldn’t agree.

Lloyd jumped out to a 4-0 lead before Piatek broke serve. It was the only game she won.

“She got her ground strokes going in the second set, but she’s played better in her career,� Lloyd said of the loser.

As winner of the Australian and French opens, Lloyd is on the third leg of her bid to win the Grand Slam, and she looks forward to another meeting with Martina Navratilova.

The longtime rivals were co-seeded No. 1 in this year’s championships, the first time this has occurred in the 99 years Wimbledon has been played.

“Martina would have to be favored, being the defending champion and ranked No. 1 for so long,� Lloyd said. “She’s won it the last few times, she won it last year and she was ranked No. 1 for so long.

“I’ve only been No. 1 on the computer for the last three weeks and she was there for 2 1/2 years.�

Yet, Lloyd says the unprecedented co-No. 1 seedings were justified.

She bases this on the closeness of their rivalry, in which Navratilova holds a 33-32 edge, and the fact they have split their last four matches.

“One thing that has changed in the last two years is that when I go out on the court with Martina, I don’t walk out there knowing I’m going to lose like I used to,� Lloyd said. “That’s been the difference this year.

“Tennis being such a mental game makes that to my advantage.�

Navratilova has won Wimbledon five times, including the last three, while Lloyd is a three-time champion with five losses in the final.

In other women’s matches Thursday, No. 3-seeded Hana Mandlikova and No. 4-seeded Manuela Maleeva duplicated Lloyd’s feat of allowing only one game.

Mandlikova, coming back from a first-round defeat at Eastbourne two weeks ago, which she said inspired her to work harder, routed fellow Czech Iva Budarova, 6-0, 6-1, and Maleeva, from Bulgaria, beat Michaela Washington, 6-0, 6-1.

“I am quite happy with myself and am looking for new things all the time,� said Mandlikova, who, at 23, owns five career victories over Navratilova. “I’m trying to reach my potential, which I did in 1981 (when she won the French Open and reached the Wimbledon final) but was too young to realize it.

“I always had the strokes, but I really had to work on my mentality and my head after ’81. I think a serve and volley player needs more time to deal with it.

“I know that I am giving 100% all the time I step onto the court. Maybe I’ll reach my potential, maybe not. I believe it’s just a matter of time for me.�

In men’s singles, Tom Gullikson produced the biggest upset of the day by beating 12th-seeded Miloslav Mecir, Czechoslovakia’s latest tennis star, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-7, 6-3.

The 20-year-old Czech has beaten Jimmy Connors and Sweden’s Mats Wilander this year and won $315,000 tournaments at Hamburg and Rotterdam, successes that have helped lift him to No. 10 in the world.

Mecir had several chances to beat Gullikson, but let a 3-1 lead slip in the third set and thereafter had to fight for every point.

After narrowly pulling out the fourth-set tiebreaker, Mecir trailed 1-5 in the final set. He staved off defeat in the next game with two fine cross-court backhand passes but could not repeat the feat two games later and lost.

Sixth-seeded Pat Cash of Australia, a semifinalist at Wimbledon last year, had to wait three days to complete his 2-6, 6-2, 7-5, 6-7, 6-3 victory over Todd Nelson. The match, which Cash said “must have been the longest in history,� was scheduled for Monday and then was halted because of rain Tuesday in the second set.

Boris Becker, a 17-year-old West German who was leading Hank Pfister two sets to one when darkness halted the match Wednesday at 2-2 in the fourth set, took only 25 minutes to finish the job. He broke Pfister’s serve for a 4-3 lead and held on to win, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4.

Kevin Curren, the eighth-seeded player, had a tough first set against Larry Stefanki before winning, 7-6, 6-3, 6-4.

In other matches of interest, Vitas Gerulaitis squeezed past Peter Fleming, 6-2, 5-7, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, and Virginia Wade claimed her 134th victory at Wimbledon with a 6-4, 7-5 decision over Lea Antonoplis.