Tennis Roundup : Laver Beats Mulligan, 6-4, 6-1, to Advance in Grand Masters

Former Wimbledon champion Rod Laver rallied from three games down in the first set to defeat fellow Australian Marty Mulligan, 6-4, 6-1, and advance to the semifinals of the Grand Masters tournament at the Los Angeles Tennis Center on the UCLA campus.

Mulligan, taking advantage of Laver’s early inconsistency, jumped out to a 4-1 lead in the first set. But Laver was in control from that point on as his first serves began to fall in.

Laver’s opponent in today’s semifinal match will be Mal Anderson, who scored a 6-2, 2-6, 7-6 win over Spain’s Andres Gimeno. Anderson won the tiebreaker, 7-4.

Today’s first semifinal match, at 1 p.m., pits Ken Rosewall against Fred Stolle. It will be followed by the Laver-Anderson match. The semifinals of the doubles will start after the singles.

After three days of rain, the sun finally broke through the clouds and let fourth-seeded Yannick Noah of France and third-seeded Joakim Nystrom of Sweden advance to the final of the $325,000 Monte Carlo Open.

Today, Noah and Nystrom will battle for the $58,500 first prize in the tournament that serves as the springtime opener of the clay court season.

Noah defeated top-seeded Mats Wilander of Sweden, 4-6, 7-6, 6-3, with an acrobatic display of shot-saving and a timely serve that provided him with key points. Nystrom beat countryman Stefan Edberg, seeded No. 2, with a display of steady baseline play, 7-5, 4-6, 6-3.

It will be the second time that Noah and Nystrom have met this year in a final. At La Quinta, Calif., in February, Nystrom soundly beat Noah, 6-1, 6-3, 6-2.

No. 1-seeded Jimmy Connors will meet No. 3-seeded Kevin Curren for the championship of the $150,000 Bank of Oklahoma tournament at Tulsa despite Curren’s loss to No. 2 Anders Jarryd in their match Saturday.

It took Jarryd nearly three hours to beat Curren, 5-7, 7-6, 6-3. Jarryd won the second set by taking the tiebreaker, 8-6.

Curren made it to the championship because he won more sets during the tournament, although he has the same 2-1 record as Jarryd and sixth-seeded Vijay Amritraj.

Connors advanced to the championship by defeating fourth-seeded John Lloyd, 7-5, 3-6, 6-1.

Connors is going for his fourth title in the event. He won in 1979, 1983 and last year.

Thirteen of the Connors-Lloyd match’s 28 games went to deuce, and the first set lasted 55 minutes. Lloyd and Connors each served five aces.