French Open Tennis Championships : Graf Leads Way, and Lendl, Lloyd, Navratilova Follow
PARIS — West Germany’s 16-year-old Steffi Graf continued her winning streak Wednesday to move into the third round of the French Open tennis championships.
Ivan Lendl, the No. 1 men’s player from Czechoslovakia; Martina Navratilova, the No. 1 women’s player, and Chris Evert Lloyd, the defending women’s champion, also advanced.
Graf, who is seeded No. 3, began the day’s play on center court at Roland Garros Stadium with a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Gretchen Rush.
Lendl followed with a 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 win over Jakob Hlasek of Switzerland.
Lloyd, seeded No. 2 among the women, also had an easy time, beating Nathalie Herreman of France, 6-2, 6-1. And Navratilova needed only 47 minutes to defeat Larissa Savchenko of the Soviet Union, 6-2, 6-2.
The lone American among the men’s seeded players, No. 13 Johan Kriek, beat Milan Srejber of Czechoslovakia, 6-1, 6-3, 5-7, 6-3. Another U.S. player, Sammy Giammalva, gave No. 4-seeded Yannick Noah a minor scare before falling, 6-3, 6-7, 6-4, 6-4.
“I was very tired,†said Noah, who had survived a five-set match on Tuesday. “I spent 7 1/2 hours on the court in the space of 22 hours, and I feel absolutely exhausted.â€
No. 12 Guillermo Vilas, the 1977 French Open champ from Argentina, also won, beating Martin Wostenholme of Canada, 7-5, 6-2, 6-2.
Women’s seeded players advancing included No. 5 Hana Mandlikova, who beat Virginie Paquet of France, 6-0, 6-1; No. 8 Manuela Maleeva, who defeated Catherine Suire of France, 6-0, 6-3; No. 7 Kathy Rinaldi, who defeated Elise Burgin, 7-6, 6-3, and 13th-seeded Carling Bassett of Canada, who rallied to beat Pascale Etchemendy of France, 3-6, 6-4, 7-5. Bassett pulled off the victory after trailing 3-5 in the final set.
Graf’s victory over Rush was her 22nd in a row, stretching back over championships in four tournaments.
“At the beginning of the year I said my goal was to win a tournament and stay in the top 10,†she said. “I think I’ve changed my mind on that.â€
The victory over Rush took 53 minutes--a marathon compared with the 34 minutes she needed to beat Andrea Betzner in the first round.
“I wasn’t really concentrating on every point,†Graf said. “It was difficult to play some of the balls because of the wind, and she wasn’t playing that badly. She was running well.â€
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