Recovering Lendl Wins Handily

Ivan Lendl, trying to salvage a season mostly lost to injury, breezed to a 6-1, 6-3 second-round victory over Patrick McEnroe in the ATP Championship on Wednesday at Mason, Ohio.

Lendl, recovering from hand surgery, was a last-minute addition to the field and gave the tournament seven of the ATP tour’s top 10 players.

Lendl’s only two tournament titles this year came on successive weeks in February at Philadelphia and Memphis.

“It has been a disappointment. Basically, I lost four months since mid-April,” Lendl said. “But I’ve just got to put that behind me.”

Lendl, seeded third, advanced to a third-round match against 14th-seeded Derrick Rostagno.

Most of the other seeded players had little trouble Wednesday.

No. 2 Stefan Edberg, the defending champion, defeated Grant Stafford, 6-2, 6-0; and No. 6 Guy Forget defeated Marcos Ondruska, 6-2, 6-2.

Fifth-seeded Andre Agassi had more difficulty with Petr Korda, winning, 7-5, 2-6, 6-2.

No. 11 Jakob Hlasek was the only seeded player eliminated, losing to Gianluca Pozzi, 6-4, 7-5.

Brad Gilbert, who beat Edberg for the ATP Championship in 1989 and was runner-up last year, defeated Jaime Yzaga, 6-2, 7-5.

Third-seeded Jennifer Capriati needed only 50 minutes to win her first match at the Players Challenge, beating Erika de Lone, 6-4, 6-0, in the second round at Toronto.

“I have a lot of confidence now that I’ve beaten a player like Monica,” said Capriati, who defeated Monica Seles to win at San Diego last week. “To have beaten Martina Navratilova (at Wimbledon) and now another top player, shows me that I can do it.”

In the third round, Capriati will take on Britain’s Sara Gomer, who defeated 13th-seeded American Marianne Werdel, 6-3, 7-5.

Sabatini, seeded No. 1, struggled to beat No. 11 Helen Kelesi of Canada, 7-6 (7-4), 6-2. Sabatini fell behind, 5-6, in the first set before holding Kelesi pointless to force the tiebreaker.

In a family matchup, fourth-seeded Katerina Maleeva knocked out her younger sister Magdalena, 6-3, 6-3.

“I would have preferred not to play Magdalena; I don’t like the idea of either one of us losing,” said Katerina, who may yet have to face another sister, second-seeded Manuela Maleeva-Fragniere, in the semifinals.

Top-seeded Swede Magnus Gustafsson and local favorite Karel Novacek, seeded second, had straight-set victories to reach the second round of the $350,000 Czechoslovak Open at Prague.

Gustafsson, ranked 10th in the world, defeated Lukas Thomas of Czechoslovakia, 6-3, 6-2. Thomas’ compatriot Novacek kept the crowd happy though, beating Veli Paloheimo of Finland, 6-4, 6-3.

In another second-round match, Thomas Muster of Austria defeated defending champion Jordi Arrese of Spain, 6-2, 6-3.