A Twist to Edberg Victory : Tennis: He stays back after injuring ankle, but still beats Chang in third-set tiebreaker.

In Sunday’s final of the Volvo/Los Angeles tournament, Stefan Edberg won by a foot.

Actually, he won by an ankle, the one he twisted in the second set of his match against Michael Chang and quickly propelled him into a classic limping imitation of Festus on “Gunsmoke.”

And somehow Edberg prevailed, scoring a 7-6 (7-4), 2-6, 7-6 (7-3) victory over a slightly befuddled Michael Chang, who watched Edberg smile wryly and look to the sky as the match ended.

The message?

“It’s very hard to believe that I won,” Edberg said.

Meanwhile, Chang couldn’t believe what Edberg had become . . . a baseliner. Unable to play his normal serve-and-volley game because he could no longer move forward, Edberg stayed back and slugged from both sides.

Chang said he had learned a lesson: “Don’t play Stefan Edberg when he twists his ankle.”

Also having trouble trusting his eyes as he saw the result was Tony Pickard, Edberg’s coach.

“It was ridiculous, really,” said Pickard, who now has come up with a new plan.

“I’m going to break both his ankles for the U.S. Open.”

Just like his ankle, Edberg’s game took a strange twist. The ankle twist happened in the second set with Chang serving at 3-2. Edberg ran laterally along the baseline, planted his left foot and then leaned the other way. Edberg rolled his ankle to the inside.

He limped around for a while, lost that game, lost his serve at love and then walked stiffly to his chair, where trainer Bill Norris examined his ankle.

Chang sat in his chair and wondered if Edberg would be able to continue. Afterward, Chang was asked whether he thought Edberg might quit.

“I was hoping,” Chang joked.

Edberg junked the rest of the set, summoned Norris again to get his ankle taped and formulated new strategy. It would be dramatic stuff.

The most feared volley in tennis? Forget it. Edberg stayed at the back of the court as if he were painted on the baseline and began spraying winners into the corners.

Edberg said an eerie feeling came over him. “I got very relaxed,” he said. “You don’t care, you just go for it. I could have stopped. I was thinking about it. It was just so hard to believe. I mean, I don’t play my game and look.

“I was almost enjoying it more than normal, which was strange. That’s what happens when you have an injury. It takes a lot of the pressure off, I think.”

Edberg had handled the pressure in the first set, when he rallied to win after Chang took a 5-2 lead. Edberg only got better in the third set, hitting 19 of his 43 winners. Chang knew how Edberg was feeling then, but there was not much he could do about it.

“When you have that frame of mind, you just go for your shots, you’re just relaxed,” Chang said. “I’ve felt that way before when I had cramps. The winning and losing fades out there.”

In the third-set tiebreaker, Chang took the first point, but Edberg won four in a row, the last on a 99-mile-an-hour ace. Edberg even changed tactics again, trying to end the points quickly.

Edberg’s artful backhand first volley dipped into the corner for 5-3, then tucked a forehand volley into the other corner. Chang reached it, but couldn’t handle it to set up match point.

After 2 hours 28 minutes, Chang ended the match at the baseline where he put a forehand into the net. He shook hands with Edberg at the net and soon received his runner-up check of $19,090.

“I thought I played pretty well,” Chang said. “It’s just that I’ve never seen Stefan play that well from the back before.”

Edberg feigned indignation when asked about his new style of play: “I can play from the baseline if I want to.”

He soon will find out if he will play in the ATP Championship in Cincinnati, which begins today. It’s all up to his ankle.

If it’s possible, he may find a salve in the winner’s check of $32,500, which goes nicely with his appearance fee. The sum is undisclosed, but is believed to be less than the reported $150,000 Andre Agassi received for playing Volvo/San Francisco.

Edberg’s fourth victory of the season--his first Volvo/Los Angeles title after three runner-up finishes--moved him closer to Ivan Lendl’s No. 1 ranking.

With a Wimbledon triumph already packed away, Edberg said he is having his best year.

“But it’s not over yet,” he said.

All that was left was for Chang to think about how he might have evened things up with Edberg. “It would have been interesting if I had cramped.”

The fifth-seeded doubles team of Scott Davis and David Pate won their first tournament of the year, defeating Peter Lundgren and Paul Wekesa, 3-6, 6-1, 6-3.