John McEnroe stayed cool in the 90-degree heat and beat Mats Wilander 6-1 6-4 on Sunday to capture the

John McEnroe stayed cool in the 90-degree heat and beat Mats Wilander 6-1, 6-4 on Sunday to capture the BTI Champions. John McEnroe stayed cool in the 90-degree heat and beat Mats Wilander 6-1, 6-4 on Sunday to capture the BTI Champions. McEnroe needed just one hour, 18 minutes to roll over Wilander and continue his domination of the Worldwide Seniors Tennis Circuit. Down 2-4 in the second set, McEnroe won the last four games to pick up his sixth win in the senior tour's last eight events.Wilander, the last player to beat McEnroe in a Seniors Circuit final, had trouble with McEnroe's serve and lost for the third time in a title match appearance this year.McEnroe hit nine aces to Wilander's one and won 17 more points off his serve.McEnroe broke Wilander's serve twice in the first set and again in the first game of the second set. Wilander broke back in the second game, then held serve to put McEnroe down in a set for the first time in the tournament.McEnroe committed 21 unforced errors in the second set, six in the sixth game, as Wilander broke him for the second time and took a 4-2 lead.But McEnroe settled down and made just six unforced errors after that, painting the corners with passing shots and hitting nine solid winners in winning 20 of the final 32 points.Karel Novacek and Tim Wilkison won the doubles title with a 2-6, 6-3 10-4 Champions tiebreak victory over Mansour Bahrami and Tobias Svantesson.McEnroe finished atop the regular-season points standings with 4,600. Wilander's appearance in the final moved him into second place with 3,215 points.The top eight finishers in the points race - McEnroe, Wilander, Henri Leconte, Jimmy Connors, Mikael Pernfors, Bahrami, Andres Gomez and Bjorn Borg - qualify for the season wrapup tournament in June in New York's Central Park.. Tim Henman, whose six matches against Byron Black have taken place in locations as varied as Seoul, South Korea, and Los Angeles, California, is about to break new ground today by playing the Zimbabwean on clay for the first time, in the opening round at the Italian Open here.

Tim Henman, whose six matches against Byron Black have taken place in locations as varied as Seoul, South Korea, and Los Angeles, California, is about to break new ground today by playing the Zimbabwean on clay for the first time, in the opening round at the Italian Open here. Neither man has a reputation for expertise on the slow red courts of Europe, the 30-year-old Black having learned the game on four grass courts built on his family's avocado farm in Harare by his father, Don, who competed at Wimbledon six times in the 1950s.Henman, who lost his first two matches against Black in 1996, on a concrete court in Seoul and an indoor carpet in Moscow, has won the last four: on grass at Wimbledon and London's Queen's Club, and on concrete in Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona.It will be interesting to see who adapts better to clay, particularly since Henman, the No 8 seed, knows that yesterday's draw might have paired him with one of the numerous specialists on the surface who have made their way to the Foro Italico for the year's fourth ATP Tour Tennis Masters Series tournament.Such was the fate of Greg Rusedski, the British No 2, who will play Fernando Vincente, a 23-year-old Spaniard from the Barcelona stable which produced Carlos Moya and Alex Corretja, among others. Rusedski, seeded No 13, has not played Vincente before.Henman, placed in the same quarter as Andre Agassi, the world No 1, may have to meet Corretja or the Slovak Karol Kucera if he advances to the third round. Kucera eliminated Henman at the same stage last year, after the Oxfordshire man became the first Briton to reach the last 16 here since Buster Mottram in 1982.Rusedski, whose only win in four appearances in Rome was against Australia's Scott Draper in the first round last year, is in the same quarter as Cedric Pioline, the French No 5 seed who won the recent Monte Carlo Open. If Rusedski advances to the second round he will play either Andrei Medvedev, of the Ukraine, or the Swiss Roger Federer.Agassi, back on European clay for the first time since winning the French Open last year, plays his American compatriot Todd Martin in the first round today. Agassi has won 10 of their 15 previous matches, most recently in the final of last year's United States Open.* Russia's Marat Safin, champion at Barcelona last week, won his second successive title on Spanish clay yesterday, easing to a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Sweden's Mikael Tillstrom in the final of the Mallorca Open.. The health service is to pay 351 speech therapists £12m to settle one of the longest-running sex-discrimination cases in legal history. The health service is to pay 351 speech therapists £12m to settle one of the longest-running sex-discrimination cases in legal history. Payments of up to £70,000 each will be made in back pay to the female speech therapists, who have fought for 15 years for equality with the male-dominated professions of clinical psychology and pharmacy.Senior NHS managers have acknowledged that the deal could cost the service millions more as the pay of the most senior therapists increases.

The status of the top specialists will be raised to match that of other health professionals, allowing them to double their earnings to £60,000 a year.It is thought that the agreement could also open the way for similar deals for midwives and physiotherapists who are claiming equal pay with colleagues in male-dominated fields. The Manufacturing Science Finance union, which has represented the speech experts, has predicted that the final cost of equality in the NHS could be as high as £100m.Under the terms of the agreement, finalised in the past few days, some therapists could receive up to £70,000 in back pay, to compensate them for lower salaries and the "glass ceiling", which prevented them from earning as much as experts in other medical professions.The claim was launched in 1986, but a succession of Conservative governments opposed the speech therapists' union, taking their arguments to the European Court on three occasions.In 1997, the newly elected Labour government accepted the validity of the case, and began the long process of settling the details.Liz Panton, a speech therapist with Newcastle City Health Trust, was delighted that the fight was finally over. "We have waited so long, it's hard to believe it's finally happened. The whole profession will be celebrating," she said.Ms Panton argued that patients would benefit from the deal because therapists would enjoy enhanced seniority and therefore be able to command more resources. The speech specialists, who train for up to four years, work with people with a range of speech and communication difficulties, from children with cleft palates to adult stroke victims and sufferers of Parkinson's Disease.Roger Lyons, general secretary of the MSF, said the agreement was a great victory not only for the women concerned, but also for women working in other professions."This is a David and Goliath story.

A small group of female professionals overcame the might of an antagonistic Tory government," he said, adding that the settlement was a testament to the Government's commitment to equal pay.. A year-long inquiry into a hospital trust that conducted an experimental treatment on premature babies has concluded that the parents were misled about what was being done to their children. A year-long inquiry into a hospital trust that conducted an experimental treatment on premature babies has concluded that the parents were misled about what was being done to their children. Some parents have claimed signatures on consent forms for the treatment, involving a new type of ventilator, were forged and both the General Medical Council (GMC) and the police have launched their own investigations.Ministers are bracing themselves for the highly critical report, to be published today, into the North Staffordshire Hospital Trust in Stoke-on-Trent. After the Bristol baby hearts scandal highlighted clinical failings in the NHS, the inquiry, first disclosed by The Independent last year, is expected to call for tough new rules governing research.Of 122 babies given the new treatment between 1989 and 1993, 43 died or were brain damaged, compared with 32 who died or were brain damaged in a control group of 122 given conventional treatment. The death rate in the experimental group was 33 per cent higher, but because of the small number of babies in the trial the difference was not statistically significant.The inquiry, by Professor Rod Griffiths, director of public health for the West Midlands, was ordered by ministers in February 1999 after parents complained they had never been told the treatment was experimental.They submitted a 1,600-page dossier to the GMC and the police launched a criminal investigation.