TENNIS ROUNDUP : McEnroe Loses a Match to Forget

Guy Forget was just glad to be playing, while John McEnroe apparently wanted to be somewhere else.

Forget, sidelined for five months by a knee injury earlier in the year, upset top-seeded John McEnroe, 6-4, 7-6, Saturday in the semifinals of an indoor tournament at Wembley, England.

“I felt kind of tired,” McEnroe said. “I was not able to want the match enough. It didn’t mean enough.

“The scheduling didn’t help me this week,” said McEnroe, who teamed up to win a doubles semifinal with Jakob Hlasek immediately after he lost to Forget. “I played better in doubles because I didn’t have to run so fast. My body just wasn’t up to it.

In the other semifinal, Michael Chang, who hasn’t won a tournament since the French Open in June, defeated Wally Masur of Australia, 7-6, 6-1.

Forget, a 24-year-old Frenchman, overpowered an unusually lethargic McEnroe to reach his second Grand Prix final of the year.

“I played this match very loose,” Forget said. “Win or lose, I was happy to play. He didn’t get a lot of first serves in, and that was very important.”

McEnroe, a five-time winner of this title who is ranked fourth in the world, hit a number of unforced errors and couldn’t get his serve into gear. He still had enough chances to put Forget away, but blew a 4-2 lead in the first set and four set points at 5-4 in the second.

Forget was the lowest-ranked player to beat McEnroe in more than 18 months.

Ivan Lendl beat Stefan Edberg, 6-0, 2-6, 6-3, at Stockholm, Sweden, in the semifinals of the Stockholm Open.

“I’m disappointed, but he played very well,” Wilander said. “I had my chances in the first set and I think I should have beaten him, but he played so well on the big points.”

In the other semifinal, Magnus Gustafsson of Sweden knocked off Mats Wilander, also of Sweden, 7-6, 6-4.

Top-ranked Lendl romped through the opening set after it took almost 30 minutes to settle the first two games.

Edberg, who beat Lendl the last time they met in the Japan Open final last April, broke for a 1-0 lead in the second set as his powerful serve-and-volley game finally got going. He broke again to lead, 5-2, then held to even the match.

Lendl, who has won 14 consecutive matches, took a 2-0 lead in the decisive set with a brilliant cross-court return off Edberg’s tricky kick serve. There were no other service breaks.

Unseeded Larisa Savchenko of the Soviet Union used a big first serve and a new game plan to upset third-seeded Helena Sukova of Czechoslovakia, 7-5, 6-4, and advance to the final of a Virginia Slims tournament at Chicago.

In today’s final, Savchenko will play Zina Garrison, who struggled but beat Manuela Maleeva of Bulgaria, 6-3, 4-6, 6-1.

Savchenko’s first victory over Sukova in five meetings came when she changed her tactics after a three-set loss to Sukova in September in the fourth round of the U.S. Open.

“This time I made up my mind I was going to come to the net, and she hit a lot of balls out,” Savchenko said.

Second-seeded Martin Jaite of Argentina defeated Mark Koevermans of the Netherlands, 7-5, 6-2, in the semifinals of a Grand Prix tournament at Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The other semifinal, between fourth-seeded Javier Sanchez of Spain and Jean Fleurian of France, was rained out and will be played today, followed by the final.