Two matches were played late afternoon.
On court 2, there was a tight but swingy (you will see what I mean) ladies’ doubles between Jane Boyle & Elena Valarche and Jenny Warren & Moira Duncan. Jane is a lefty who can produce a lot of slice. Elena likes coming to the net at every possible opportunity, but the pair haven’t played together a lot. Jenny &Moira have played together more. Jenny has a consistent game and Moira has a particularly strong forehand.
In the event it was Jane & Elena who got going fastest, getting to a lead of 4-2. But Jenny & Moira dug in to get the score back to 5 all, then 6 all. Jenny and Moira ran away with the tie break to take it 7-2 for the first set.
But in the second set, Jane &Elena piled on the pressure once more, to take the set 6-2 to bring on a Match Tie Break (first to 10 etc.). Again, momentum swung behind Jenny and Moira who reached a 7-2 lead. Unfortunately for them, this isn’t enough to win a Match Tie Break. That gave Jane & Elena the opportunity to recover the lost minibreaks and equalise the score at 8 points all. In the crucial battle for the last two points, Jenny & Moira secured the minibreak to give them a tight 7-6⁷⁻² 2-6 [10-8] victory.
The match finished at precisely the same time as the men’s singles match below.
The second match played was a men’s singles between Peter Davies and Logan Mair, the third seed. Logan plays for the first team and has a lot of hard and tricky serves and shots. Peter is now 18 months on from a successful hip replacements, is highly mobile and understands how to win points, but has no particularly strong shots to trouble Logan. Peter’s aim was to get one or two games and have a bit of fun. This was helped somewhat by the fact Logan had been up playing golf at 6:30 in the morning, some distance from London.
The match went as you might expect. Logan won most of the points, and hit a lot of winners from loose shots by Peter, but made one or two errors. In particular most of Logan’s fast first serves seemed to be going out. Peter managed to craft a few points, and hit a small number of winners which added up to one game in each set He also set up half a dozen relatively straightforward winners but then failed to execute. But they would not have changed the course of the match. Sultan commented that Logan was made to work for his 6-1 6-1 victory. But not too hard, fortunately, considering his services were required for a tight men’s first team match to be played the same evening. West Heath men’s I beat Globe I 14-10.
After the event, Peter checked the records for the previous match between them, which was a second round men’s singles match in 2017, which Logan won 6-2 6-2. So one game per set was not actually enough to show progress. Never mind!
