Ajeet Rai is safely through to the singles semi-finals at Carrara on Queensland’s Gold Coast after beating young wild card Hayden Jones in straight sets. Rai had a break point in the fourth game, and Jones had one in the fifth, even though Rai had started that game with three aces. Jones had two more break points in the seventh game before Rai held serve after two deuces, but the next few games saw comfortable holds. A break point in the twelfth game gave Rai his first set point, but Jones won the three points he needed to force a tie-break.
It was one of the poorer deciders that I’ve seen lately, with only three serves held out of twelve. One of those gave Jones the initial jump after they had started by each hitting a great return to forced the server to hit a backhand into the net. Rai also won his second point, this coming when Jones swung a cross-court backhand too far, but the next six points went to the receiver. One of those was to a beautiful cross-court forehand winner from Jones off Rai, but the two that mattered most came when Jones served for what would become the last time. Rai hit a fabulous cross-court backhand winner to take the first point, and a great rally on the second saw Jones finish with a cross-court forehand into the tramlines. That gave Rai a second set point, this time on his own serve, and he converted it with a beautiful backhand drop volley with Jones stranded on the opposite side of the court. The set had taken an hour and eight minutes.
I was only able to watch bits and pieces of the second set, but that included the game where Jones lost his serve when hitting a double fault to give Rai a 3-2 lead. The New Zealander hit a beautiful backhand lob to finish the next game, and the ones which followed all went with serve. A forehand over the baseline from Jones gave Rai a match point, and Jones was forced to hit his next cross-court forehand too wide, ending the match after two hours and three minutes.