Grand Masters Tournament : Rosewall Routs Stolle, Takes On Laver Tonight

Ken Rosewall and Rod Laver each claimed straight-set victories Sunday to advance into tonight’s championship match of the Grand Masters tournament at the Los Angeles Tennis Center on the UCLA campus.

Rosewall, the most dominant player in the last five years on the over-45 circuit, needed only 50 minutes to defeat fellow Australian Fred Stolle, 6-0, 6-1. He has already won two of the first three tournaments of the year, in Maui, Hawaii, and Bluewater Bay, Fla.

In Sunday’s other semifinal, Laver beat Mal Anderson, 6-1, 7-6.

Rosewall, 51, scored four straight points to go up, 5-0, in the second set and had three match points before Stolle came back to win his only game of the day. Stolle took it to deuce twice in the seventh game, but Rosewall ended any comeback threats by putting him away.

Laver, a Newport Beach resident and winner of the 1986 opener in Kansas City, also had little trouble in his first set against Anderson. But the two traded games through the second until Anderson led, 6-5.

Looking to even the match, he got behind in the next game, 0-30, came back to tie and got it to deuce before Laver won and forced a tiebreaker. There, the 49-year-old two-time winner of the Grand Slam jumped ahead, 4-2, went on to win, 7-3, to take the second set and the match.

Laver and Rosewall also teamed to advance to the doubles final, losing a first-set lead of 5-0 before coming back to beat Stolle and Marty Mulligan, 6-7, 6-1, 6-0. They will meet Anderson and Neale Fraser, 6-2, 6-3 winners over Ramanathan Krishnan and Andres Gimeno in Sunday’s other semifinal.

Entering this week’s play, Rosewall had 25 points to lead the overall standings, with Cliff Drysdale, the runner-up in the last two tournaments, second with 18. Laver is third with 15 and Anderson fourth at 13. Drysdale is covering a tournament in Monte Carlo for ESPN.

The winner of tonight’s match, scheduled for 7 p.m., will earn another 10 points, and $8,000.