Lendl Whips McEnroe To Capture Open Title

FLUSHING MEADOW, New York -- Ivan Lendl finally got the monkey off his back.

He finally did in less than three hours what he was not able to do in the previous three years as runner-up here at Flushing Meadow.

He finally did what no man had been able to do before: He beat John McEnroe in the final round of the U.S. Open.

And he did it easily, in straight sets, 7-6(7-1), 6-3, 6-4.

Yet he did not unseat the defending champion McEnroe with any particular flair. His serve was not particularly strong, going in only 57 percent of the time. He broke McEnroe only three times, while losing his serve just once. He hit a quiet 42 winners and made 18 unforced errors. He even double-faulted four times.

But Lendl was there when he had to be. When he was down 5-2 in the first set he held off set point and rallied back to hold his serve. When he needed to win the next three games, he broke McEnroe and eventually forced a tiebreaker.

When he had to be at his best--in the tiebreaker--he was; he took three of McEnroe's service points to win it easily, 7-1.

And after trading eight service games with McEnroe in the third set, when he needed a break, Ivan Lendl rallied back from 0-15 to go ahead 5-4.

After that it was easy. Lendl won the next four points closing out the match with a put-away forehand volley.

"This is the tournament I want to win the most and finally I did it," said Lendl after the match. "I'm just so happy that I'm not even going to try to describe it."

The two-hour and thirty-three-minute cakewalk by Lendl represented the first time the Open has been won by a non-American since Argentina's Guillermo Vilas defeated Jimmy Connors back in 1977.

Lendl's victory combined with Hana Mandlikova's upset of Martina Navratilova on Saturday produced a Czechoslovakian sweep of the two top events. In addition Czech Helena Sukova teamed up with West Germany's Claudia Kohde-Kilsch yesterday to dethrone Navratilova and Pam Shriver as the womens' doubles champs.

Ironically, the two upsets in the mens' and womens' final were uncharacteristic of his year's tournament which featured few surprises.

Aside from fifth-seeded Kevin Curren's first-round loss to Frenchman Guy Forget and Mandlikova's three-set semi-final thriller over Chris Evert-Lloyd, he only major upset was eighth-seeded Boris Becker's fall in the round of 16.

Many had hoped for a quarter-final matchup between the 17-year-old West German and the top-seeded McEnroe; but it was not to be, as the Wimbledon champion fell to Sweden's Joakim Nystrom in four sets.

Two nights later, McEnroe had little trouble disposing of the 10th-seeded Nystrom, and despite being extended to five sets by another Swede--3rd-ranked Mats Wilander in the semis--it appeared as though be would do the same to Lendl. Indeed the oddsmakers were predicting that only the one-hour rain delay yesterday would prevent McEnroe from a three-set victory in the finals.

When he jumped out to his 3-0 lead in the first set it looked as though McEnroe was well on his way to his second straight, and fifth overall, U.S. Open singles championship.

But Lendl battled back, tying the defending champ at 5-5 before taking the set from McEnroe in the tie-breaker.

"When he got into the match, he was damn tough from that point forward," said McEnroe. "I was hoping to sneak that first set out, and then it would have been a chance to be different. I wouldn't say that the result would be different. When he got into the match it really turned things around. At least to have a set, you have a set to play with, but losing it from that point was too much to overcome at that point," McEnroe added.

After being swamped in the tiebreaker, McEnroe seemed to lose his concentration and he was quickly broken by Lendl on his first service of the second set.