Rubin Statham has been hit by the same bug which seems to afflict Artem Sitak quite regularly, in that his Challenger match against Jayden Court in Playford last night was not recorded. I was only keeping half an eye on the early stages of the match, which began just as the doubles final was finishing in Tokyo, while at the same time writing other reports. That meant I didn’t have time to score the first set, but luckily all my other bits and pieces could be put aside once the second set got underway.
Statham served first, and broke Court’s serve in the fourth game before losing his own in the seventh. I did see the ace which saved the first break point and took them to a second deuce, but I didn’t note down anything else in that set. The next three games went with serve, Court winning the tenth with two aces after the only deuce, and he broke Statham’s serve in the next game to leave himself serving for the set. Starting and finishing that crucial game with double faults didn’t help, and he lost his first point in the tie-break to make matters worse. They improved immeasurably when he won both of Statham’s next two serves, and he celebrated by hitting another ace. He did the same to convert his first set point, and that came after an hour and two minutes.
He started the second set with an ace before winning a great 17 shot rally with a beautiful forehand winner down the line, and hit two more aces to complete the hold. Statham hit a nice inside-out forehand winner and a beautiful backhand down the line on the way to holding serve in turn, and Court hit a fabulous forehand winner down the left sideline on the way to winning game three. Statham started his next game with a backhand over the baseline, but he could do nothing about the beautiful cross-court forehand and backhand winners that came next from Court. The Australian then hit a beautiful forehand drop volley to win another great rally after 14 shots, and Statham had been broken to love.
The next two games went with serve, Statham winning the last point in his game when Court hit a cross-court backhand into the tramlines to end another good 16 shot rally. Court needed to get through two deuces before he held safely next up, leaving Statham needing to hold to stay in the match. Unforced errors either side of a double fault made that seem unlikely, although Court lost the first match point when he hit a backhand into the net to lose the first match point. He made no mistake with the second, a beautiful cross-court return taking the honours, and the match was all over after an hour and 40 minutes. The final score was 7-6 (4), 6-2.