French Open Tennis Championships : McEnroe Gets Angry, Takes It Out on His Opponent

PARIS — John McEnroe became angry Monday and won his first match in the French Open tennis championships since 1985.

For the second year in a row, McEnroe appeared headed for an early exit at Roland Garros, where he was upset in the first round last year by Horacio de la Pena.

But this time, he reached the second round with a 7-6, 6-1, 7-6 victory over 21-year-old Alexandr Volkov of the Soviet Union.

McEnroe, however, showed his anger as early as the fifth game of the first set.

Volkov was leading, 3-1, and moved to deuce when McEnroe hit a forehand into the net.

“Choke. You’re a choker,” McEnroe screamed at himself. On the next point, his anger switched to an overzealous linesman, who called a foot fault before McEnroe even attempted his serve.

McEnroe stopped and shouted: “Thanks for calling it before I hit it.”

The ruling was overturned, and McEnroe slammed an ace to start his comeback.

“You woke me up,” McEnroe said to the official as he rallied to win the set in a 7-2 tiebreaker. In the third set, he also won that tiebreaker by a 7-2 score.

But McEnroe was clearly unhappy with the way he played in the first set.

“It would have been tough to get worse,” he said. “I would have been defaulted by the chair umpire for bad play.”

Though he was hardly in top form, McEnroe left, as he arrived, to a standing ovation from the crowd on court one.

Steffi Graf of West Germany, the world’s No. 1 women’s player, defeated Nathalie Guerree of France, 6-0, 6-4, in 52 minutes and was never in danger against the 232nd-ranked player.

Third-seeded Mats Wilander of Sweden beat Josef Cihak of Czechoslovakia, 7-5, 7-5, 6-1, and sixth-seeded Yannick Noah of France downed Ricki Osterthun of West Germany, 7-6, 6-1, 6-4.

Meanwhile, ninth-seeded Andre Agassi eliminated Paolo Cane of Italy, 6-4, 6-1, 6-2, for his 16th victory in 17 matches on clay in 1988.

Mikael Pernfors of Sweden, the 1986 finalist, failed to make it past the first round for the second consecutive year, losing to Luiz Mattar of Brazil, 6-4, 6-2, 6-1.

Catherine Tanvier of France scored an upset when she ousted 11th-seeded Katerina Maleeva of Bulgaria, 6-4, 7-5.

Fifth-seeded Manuela Maleeva of Bulgaria, Katarina’s sister, beat Petra Huber of Austria, 6-3, 6-1, and fourth-seeded Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina defeated Maider Laval of France, 6-1, 7-5.

Second-seeded Martina Navratilova and third-seeded Chris Evert play today.

Among the men starting today are top-seeded Ivan Lendl, fifth-seeded Boris Becker of West Germany and fourth-seeded Pat Cash of Australia.