Tennis: Lendl survives tense tie-break

If Ivan Lendl was to salvage something from his worst season for 10 years, the Seiko Super tournament in Tokyo was the place to do it. He has won it four times and yesterday earned himself the chance of making it five when he recovered from losing the first set in his semi-final to beat Paul Haarhuis, of the Netherlands, 3-6, 6-4, 7-6, taking the decider 7-5. He will play Todd Martin, who inflicted one of the Czech-born American's nine first-round defeats this season, at the Australian Indoor. Martin, who beat Stefan Edberg in the quarter-finals, had a straight- sets victory over the Canadian Greg Rusedski, the world's 130th-ranked player who had played the best tennis of his career to reach the last four. Lendl's revival looked like coming to an end when he dropped his first service game and failed to cope with Haarhuis's big serve in the first set. Chasing his second title of the season, he went for broke and got lucky with line calls to take the second, and after squandering break points at 4-4 in the third, he fought back from 1-4 in the tie-break to steal the match.

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