It's been a long summer, and commitments away from tennis have made it impossible to write up match reports in the way that I had done earlier.  It also wasn't helped by the ITF changing their data and streaming partner, making it more than difficult to figure out what was going on in so many matches.  However, with most of those bugs appearing to have been fixed, and the Australasian circuit having concluded, I'm now able to get back to my earlier routine.  It's fitting that the first of these new reports features our highest-ranked player in her first match with a new partner.  At this stage they're together only for one tournament, but who knows what may happen?

I'm also thrilled to see Paige Hourigan back in action, having been off the scene for long enough (more than six months) to earn herself a Special Ranking.  Her comeback isn't at ITF level: instead, she's playing in a WTA 125 tournament in Antalya, partnering Rutuja Bhosale.  The combination are unbeaten, having won ITF tournaments in China and Japan last year in their only previous starts together, but this event is a big step up from those.  This week also sees players in locations that they haven't experienced before with Reece Falck and Finley Hall both playing in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, and James Watt sampling the delights of Mexico for the first time as he teams up with Finn Reynolds in Cuernavaca.

Monique Barry and Elena Micic capped off a wonderful two weeks in northern Tasmania by winning their second ITF W35 title in a row, completing the Burnie-Launceston double by beating Miho Kuramochi and Erika Sema in straight sets.  They lost just one set all week, just as they did in Burnie, but the straight sets victory in the final wasn't quite as easy as the score indicated.  Sema lost both her service games in the first set, but they stayed on serve in the second set until Kuramochi got broken in the fifth game when she finished with three unforced errors in a row.

Unforced errors were the bugbear in every remaining game as well, with mistakes on the final point of each game costing all four players a break of serve.  Micic needed to hit a beautiful cross-court forehand winner to save a break point in her final service game, bringing up a first match point as she took them to deuce, but she dumped a backhand into the net to lose the deciding point.  It didn't matter in the end, as poor volleys from Sema to lose good rallies on the last two points of Kuramochi's game cost the Japanese pair the match after an hour and nine minutes.  The final score was 6-2, 6-4.

The two titles have rocketed Barry and Micic up the rankings, with the New Zealander provisionally heading inside the top 250 once all the points for both weeks are added into the mix.  She's only defending the points for a first-round loss and quarter-final loss from the equivalent weeks last year.  The Australian circuit takes a break next week before everyone heads to Mildura in Victoria for the first of two grass court events, with Swan Hill to follow a week later.  Barry and Micic will be playing both, and will be hoping to add more titles before the circuit takes a break until the winter series in Queensland.

A very good week on court in Burnie ended superbly on Saturday when both Monique Barry and James Watt shared in their respective doubles titles.  It was Barry's sixth success in finals, but her first at a level above the entry point of W15s.  Watt was collecting his fourth title, and his third with Matt Hulme.  Interestingly enough, they've beaten higher-ranked teams in all of those successes.  The match reports for both of those finals are available for everyone to read.

Barry's points from the previous tournament in Timaru were enough to move her to new career-high rankings in both singles and doubles, and she'll improve those even more once Burnie's points are added as well.  Watt will slide inside the top 300 when his doubles points from Burnie are added to the mix.  They're not the only ones with that sort of success, as Lulu Sun made a huge jump in the doubles list with her first round win in Dubai.  It was a shame that her partner Peyton Stearns had to withdraw from their second round match after playing two tough singles matches earlier in the day.  Alex Klintcharov has reached a new highest ranking in singles, and his next doubles win will do the same for him in that discipline.

It's been a while since Matt Donald first tasted success on the ITF tournament, during which time he's been on the losing side in finals in both singles and doubles, but last night he and his Czech partner Tadeas Paroulek triumphed in the doubles final in Monastir.  They cemented their claim to being the best team in the competition by beating the Spanish second seeds after vanquishing the top seeds in their quarter-final.  Although the win won't be reflected in the rankings until next week, he is likely to jump about 150 spots to around 750 in the world, not far short of his career-high 712.  With just one quarter-final included in his points from this period last year, and nothing else to defend before the end of May, he has a great opportunity to force his way quite a bit higher.

There was a lot on the line for New Zealand men’s tennis when the Davis Cup team took on Jamaica in Kingston, with the loser being relegated to the depths of Group III while the winner would get a crack at a play-off in September to potentially head into Group I.  Team captain Artem Sitak was full of confidence that his team could pull off the win, with the query, as always, being about the strength of our singles players.  Doubles is where New Zealand has shone for a long time, especially with Michael Venus, Marcus Daniell and Sitak himself at the forefront, and the current team, spearheaded by Finn Reynolds, is pretty solid as well.

Given that everyone expected the doubles to go to New Zealand, irrespective of which combination Jamaica selected, it was an amazing start to the tie when Jack Loutit was able to upset the Jamaican number one, Blaise Bicknell, in the opening singles rubber.  The court was quite slow and bouncy, and the terrific support from the small, but very vocal, crowd, could have been enough to put many players off.

The second rubber saw Kiranpal Pannu up against local hero Rowland “Randy” Phillips.  The latter may be unranked, but has a ton of experience in Davis Cup when he’s not at his day job of coaching tennis at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, and he put all of that history into his performance as he eventually beat Pannu in three sets.

With Jamaica needing Bicknell to win his reverse singles to give themselves a chance of winning the tie, Jamaica effectively conceded the doubles by fielding the under-strength combination of John Chin and Nicholas Gore.  Ajeet Rai and Finn Reynolds relished the lack of higher level play from their opponents to win the match in straight sets in a tick under an hour.

Although Bicknell was going in fresh to the first reverse singles, Sitak elected to put Rai in as his opponent ahead of Pannu, with the New Zealander getting just half an hour’s respite before he had to be back on court.  The only break of serve in the first set came when Rai had a nightmare fourth service game, hitting three double faults.  They swapped service breaks early in the second set, but Rai lost his next game as well and couldn’t recover.

The loss meant that Loutit and Phillips had everything to play for in the fifth and deciding rubber, and the local crowd were beside themselves when Phillips broke the New Zealander’s serve straight away after holding in the opening game.  He then had to save five break points in the marathon ninth game, which lasted for more than 16 minutes before the hold completed the set.

He went further in front when Loutit lost the opening game in the second set, but the left-hander broke back to win the fourth game before breaking again the next time Phillips served.  That was enough to eventually give him the set, so the result of the tie would come down to a single set shootout.  Phillips held serve to start before breaking in the second game, but lost his own serve next up.

Phillips did hold to love next time round, but from there on Loutit was in control, winning the last four games for the loss of just four points.  Phillips sent his final forehand back over the baseline, with the New Zealand team rushing across the court and piling onto Loutit to celebrate the win.  It wasn’t such a great day for Phillips, who announced his retirement from Davis Cup tennis after a decade-long career in the Jamaican colours.

The tournament that everyone looks towards at the beginning of each year is the Australian Open, and this year only three New Zealanders competed, as well as Cameron Norrie.  It was a poor start for Lulu Sun, eliminated by Danka Kovinić in the first round as the Montenegrin took another step on her long road to recovery from injury, but what was even more worrying was seeing Michael Venus and Nikola Mektić also lose in the first round, the fifth seeds going down to the Portuguese pair of Nuno Borges and Francisco Cabral.  It was a dismal start for Norrie as well, losing in four sets to Matteo Berrettini after winning the first.

That left Erin Routliffe to carry the flag on her own until the mixed doubles started, when she would be joined by Venus.  Coming in cold after picking up an injury in the WTA Tour Finals two months earlier, she and Gaby Dabrowski were the second seeds.  They made hard work of their first three matches, with Dabrowski getting broken in her first service game each time as they went on to lose the first set before winning in three.

They had a much easier quarter-final before going back to the earlier pattern in the semi-final, again losing the first set after Dabrowski got broken.  This time, though, they were up against the third seeds, Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko and, although they won the second set, were unable to take the third.

It was a similar story in the mixed doubles, where Routliffe and Venus were also the second seeds.  A winning match tie-break, a walkover and another match tie-break got them through to the semi-final, but the Australian wild card pair of Olivia Gadecki and Venus’ former partner John Peers were too strong, winning in straight sets.  Gadecki and Peers would go on to win the title over another wild card pair, Kim Birrell and John-Patrick Smith.