The doubles matches at the Shenzhen Challenger yesterday were moved indoors after rain disrupted the programme but, unlike last week, there was room for a camera to be mounted above each court to let us follow their progress. It was a frantic start in the key match with New Zealand interest, as Li Zhe, Ben Lock and Coleman Wong all held to love with four first serves, the latter pair each finishing with a couple of aces. Unfortunately Rubin Statham went the opposite way, being broken to love, the highlight of the game being a fabulous backhand return into the tramlines from Wong.
Li and Lock held to love again, each hitting another ace, before Wong got the serving wobbles, holding rather less comfortably than the first time round when his last four points all came from second serves. Statham had a much better second service game, starting with an ace out wide to Wong that Li didn’t like, perhaps because it had touched the net cord on the way through. Li then hit a fabulous backhand winner down the tramlines before holding serve comfortably to close out the set after 28 minutes.
Two great rallies opened the second set, Li losing the first with an overhit forehand and Wong winning the second with a lovely forehand down the tramlines. Lock went on to hold serve, as did everyone through the next seven games, with the quality of the serving being generally so good that a lot of the points were lost through forced errors on return of serve. There was one bone of contention fairly early on, though, when Li and Wong disputed the first point of Statham’s first service game, claiming that the serve was long. I had thought that, too, and the replay confirmed it – but they didn’t complain about the serve on the third point, which they won, and which landed just as far past the service line.
The ninth game was where everything changed, Lock losing his first point with a backhand volley into the net. Li then hit a beautiful forehand return through the middle which caused Lock’s attempted response to get jammed into the floor, and Wong’s next backhand return hit the net cord before landing in open court. There was a great rally on the final point, but it ended when Lock was forced to lob a backhand shot too far, and that left Li serving for the match. It was the worst game that we saw, all five points being lost by unforced errors, with three of those coming from Li. It gave Statham and Lock a lifeline, and they took full advantage by winning Statham’s game and allowing Wong to win only one point, the break of serve ending the set after 48 minutes.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tie-break have as long a sequence of held serves (16) as this one, even though it started with Statham losing the first point when he was jammed into the ground by a good return from Wong. There were great rallies on the last two points before the second change of ends, but Wong’s ace out wide to Lock, which was another where the call was disputed, gave Li and Wong three match points. Statham was equal to the task when he served his two points, Li’s return ending up short before Wong took a huge swing and walloped his cross-court forehand return well wide. The acid test was always going to be what happened when the serve went back over, but the great rally on Li’s first point ended when the server hit a backhand into the net. That levelled the scores and took them to the third change of ends.
What had been a bad first point for Li became a nightmare on his second, as he sent a forehand over the baseline to gift a match point to Statham and Lock, and his forehand return of Lock’s serve slammed into the net to end the match after an hour and 36 minutes. The final score was 3-6, 7-5, 11-9.