GOUGH STUMBLES INTO NEW YORK SECOND ROUND

Alex Gough, the Welsh number one and world number nine , stumbled into the second round of the DLJdirect Tournament of Champions in New York today when Stewart Boswell, the teenage hope of Australia, showed he is still too green to exploit a tired older man with serious cramp problems over a one point tiebreak in the fifth game of a 126 minute game .

Unlike the fourth seeded English number one. Simon Parke, who had started the first round the previous day with one knee bandaged and a noticeably slow gait, Gough began with sound limbs but was troubled increasingly by wrist and leg cramps.

The young Australian took the opening game but could not contain the wily Welshman in the middle games of the marathon match. It was only when Gough suddenly began complaining of wrist cramps in the fourth game that Boswell came back into contention and began to look like a winner as Gough had to leave the court for three minutes after one bad spill in the back court.

At 13-13 in the fifth Gough was immobilised in the front court unable to put his foot to the ground and was forced to crab sideways across the court to receive service when the referee instsed that cramp was no reason to stop play.

At 14-14, having rescued a match point with a painfully contested all-court rally, he joked about asking for a 14 point tiebreak but actually opted ofr one point, which he won when Boswell obligingly tipped the ball anxiously into the tin.

"One more rally would have done me in," Gough admitted. "I think I must be eating too much good food here."

Just as Parke survived the challenge of Amjad Khan, a Pakistani teenage star, to reach a second round match against a familiar domestic challenger, Derek Ryan of Ireland, so Gough came through to meet Scotland's Martin Heath.

Heath won a fast and furious encounter with former world champion Rodney Eyles, while Canada's Graham Ryding came through confidently to meet the third seed, Ahmed Barada of Egypt, and Paul Johnson of England, the sixth seed, came through to meet Peter Marshall after the doublehanded Englishman survived a torrid 93 minute attack from Thierry Lincou of France.

The other Scot in the field, World Champion Peter Nicol, dropped a game to Rodney Durbach, a tough South African qualifier, before advancing 15-6 15-13 14-17 15-10 to meet Australia's Billy Haddrell, suggesting that the lefthanded 28-year-old from Aberdeen is still not entirely recovered from the gastro-enteritis that struck him so disastrously during his home town final of the British Open Championship.

Haddrell, the only qualifier to survive to the second round, is a great comic and showman who was perhaps less disturbed than the sometimes temperamental Welsh champion by the long wait to the last match of the day and the dead atmosphere that descended upon the Grand Central Station showcourt after the New York audience decamped to watch the Superbowl in the bars around 42nd Street.

After a hard test against a gritty South African, joke time with the barmy Australian may be just about the last thing the world champion needs at Grand Central tomorrow Evening.