TENNIS ROUNDUP : Sampras, Lendl Upset on Grass; Navratilova Wins

Defending champion Ivan Lendl and U.S. Open champion Pete Sampras were upset Wednesday in the second round of the Queens Club grass courts tournament at London.

Lendl, who didn’t lose a set in the tournament last year, this time was ousted in his first match, losing, 5-7, 6-3, 6-4, to Canadian Grant Connell.

American qualifier Mark Keil posted the biggest victory of his career when he beat Sampras, 6-2, 7-6 (7-2).

Top-seeded Stefan Edberg cruised to a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Frenchman Arnaud Boetsch.

Lendl, given a first-round bye, was ahead, 7-5, 3-1, when Connell won five games in a row. He broke Lendl after a 10-minute rain delay at 3-3 in the third and served out for the match.

Sampras’ loss came in his first match on grass in nearly a year.

Keil, from Tampa, Fla., served 10 aces in the 79-minute match.

“Right now I feel on top of the world,” Keil, 24, said. “This is one of the biggest days of my life.”

Sampras, ranked eighth in the world to Keil’s 224, breezed through his opening service game and then things started to go wrong.

He won only one of the next seven games as Keil, having played three more matches through the qualifying series, coped better with a swirling wind.

“He had nothing to lose and I did,” Sampras said. “But it’s certainly not the way I wanted to start out the grass-court season.

“Hopefully, my form will be a little better at Wimbledon.”

Martina Navratilova finally played in the rain-disrupted Edgbaston tournament at Birmingham, England, and defeated Yayuk Basuki of Indonesia, 6-2, 6-3.

Defending champion Zina Garrison also won, ousting Pascale Paradis-Mangon of France, 6-4, 6-3, despite problems caused by a busy telephone.

Navratilova, a nine-time Wimbledon champion, said it was a relief to be able to play on grass again, and she declared herself fit.

“I’m feeling very good about my game and the state of my mind,” she said. “Last year I didn’t know if I could play any more because of my knees, but I’ve had them fixed and now I feel 10 years younger.”

For the second-seeded Garrison, crowd noise posed as much of a problem as her opponent.

A spectator in a hospitality box, former England cricketer Bob Woolmer, distracted the players by talking on his mobile phone. Umpire John Hughes told him to keep his voice down when Garrison was 2-1 and 40-30 up in the second set.

“The guy on the phone was having himself a good conversation,” Garrison said. “People in the boxes have a couple of drinks and have a good time and think you can’t hear them.”

Jimmy Arias, the only American in the field, advanced to the quarterfinals of a tournament at Florence, Italy, with a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Andrei Wysand of the Soviet Union.

Top-seeded Horst Skoff also made the quarterfinals by beating Belgian Bart Wuyts, 6-3, 5-7, 6-1. Qualifier Carlos Costa of Spain upset fifth-seeded Richard Fromberg of Australia, 6-3, 5-7, 6-4.