Colin Sinclair served first when he and Blake Ellis played Rubin Statham and Ben Lock in the first round of doubles at the ATP Challenger in Sydney, and he and Lock had comfortable holds of serve before Ellis was facing break points after Lock hit a forehand winner down the tramlines. Sinclair saved the first with a forehand volley before Statham’s next return went into the net, and Ellis won the deciding point with an inside-out backhand volley. Statham held comfortably as well, and the sequence carried on, with nothing standing out amongst the forced errors apart from a couple of good rallies, until there was a beautiful cross-court backhand winner from Ellis off Statham in the eighth game. There was a great rally when Lock served that went for 16 shots, and that finished when Sinclair was forced to hit a forehand volley into the net.
Ellis finished the next game by acing Lock out wide, and that left Statham serving to force a tie-break. Ellis hit a beautiful backhand return down the singles sideline, but it was his partner’s forehand winner through the middle which took them to deuce and gained a set point. That didn’t worry Statham, whose great serve to Ellis saw the inside-out return fly away wide. Double faults are never good, and one in a tie-break is normally disastrous, and that was the case when Lock served one to lose his first point. Sinclair winning his second and third points through return errors meant that his team had three more set points, and Lock was forced to hit a forehand into the net at the end of a great rally on the first of those. The set had taken 50 minutes.
Statham served first in the second set, and got taken to deuce by a beautiful backhand return down the tramlines from Ellis. There was a great rally on the deciding point, but Statham was able to hold serve when he smashed away a volley. Ellis, Lock and Sinclair all held comfortably, but a double fault from Statham when he served again meant that he was again at deuce, and this time he hit a backhand over the baseline to give away a break.
Ellis had another routine hold before hitting a fabulous cross-court backhand winner off Lock, and he followed that with a fabulous inside-out forehand return to give his team break points. He made it a hat-trick of terrific shots when he finished another good rally with a beautiful inside-out forehand volley, and that meant Sinclair would be serving for the match. The first two forehand returns went out of court, and he aced Lock down the middle to give his team four match points. After his heroics in the previous game it was probably fitting that Ellis should hit the winning shot, a cross-court overhead volley. The final score was 7-6 (3), 6-2, and the match took an hour and 20 minutes.