Isaac Becroft was the first of the New Zealand doubles players in action today when he and Alejandro Garcia played Chad Kissell and Mykhailo Kvantaliani in Norman. The first set went by pretty quickly because, unlike most matches at this level, there wasn’t a single deuce. Becroft and Garcia lost their serve in the second game, and then had to watch whoever served first for the K team finish the fifth game with three successive aces. That same player started his third service game with two double faults, and eventually got broken to see Becroft and Garcia back on serve. They couldn’t capitalise, however, getting broken to love in the next game to lose the set after 24 minutes.
The first deuce came in the opening game of the second set, where Kissell and Kvantaliani came back from 30-40 to finish with an ace on the deciding point. Becroft and Garcia got safely through a deciding point in the sixth game, and the sequence of holds continued until they were serving to stay in the match. 40-30 seemed like a pretty safe score, but they lost the next point before surrendering tamely with a double fault. The final score was 6-4, 6-4, and the match took 59 minutes.