Rubin Statham held serve comfortably to start the first round match between himself and Ben Lock and the Australian pair of Calum Puttergill and Tristan Schoolkate at the ATP Challenger tournament in San Luis Potosi this morning. Schoolkate then held to love, finishing with a fabulous overhead forehand volley into the tramlines. Lock finished his first game with an ace, but Puttergill was taken to deuce when he was forced into two forehand errors. Statham’s return of the deciding point went long before he copied his partner by acing Puttergill out wide to finish another comfortable hold.
Schoolkate again held to love before Lock won a game where all six points were decided on second serves. A double fault from Puttergill gave away a break point, and Lock ended the best rally of the match with a cross-court forehand winner to convert that chance. Schoolkate’s cross-court backhand volley won the great short rally on the opening point of Statham’s service game, but three unreturnable serves at the end ensured that he held to complete the set after 34 minutes.
Schoolkate started the second set with a beautiful cross-court forehand drop volley, and went on to win the game before Statham held to love. A beautiful backhand stop volley from Schoolkate gave his team a game point next up, but he was forced to hit a backhand volley over the baseline to give away a deuce, but Puttergill came up with a beautiful backhand drop volley to win the deciding point.
He hit a lovely cross-court backhand volley in the next game, where a backhand volley into the net from Statham took them to another deuce, but Puttergill slammed his backhand return of the deciding point over the baseline. He made up for that two games later when he hit the shot of the match, a stunning forehand winner down the line, but that wasn’t enough to stop Statham holding serve. Lock hit a beautiful inside-out forehand winner into the tramlines in the next game, and a fabulous cross-court backhand winner from Statham meant that Puttergill had been taken to deuce for a third time. Just like the others, though, he still held serve, Schoolkate smashing away a volley to win the deciding point.
Everyone held comfortably from there to the end of the set, so it was just a case of picking out a few highlights. Lock hit a beautiful cross-court forehand winner to end Statham’s next game, with the latter then hitting a beautiful forehand lob to save the first game point when Puttergill served, and Lock took them to the tie-break when he aced Schoolkate down the middle.
The tie-break started badly for the Australians when Schoolkate was forced to hit an inside-out backhand volley wide to end a great rally on the first point, but it was worse for the other pair when Statham lost both his points. He hit a backhand wide to end the first one before Puttergill hit a beautiful backhand return down the tramlines.
Things got even worse for Statham and Lock when they changed ends, with Statham hitting a backhand volley over the baseline to lose Lock’s second point, but Puttergill was forced into errors on two volleys to lose both of Schoolkate’s serves. That put the teams back on an even keel, and winning volleys from Lock on both of Statham’s serves meant that they had a match point. There was nothing much wrong with Puttergill’s serve, and a rally looked like it might develop until he completely mistimed a forehand volley and hit it straight into the ground to end the match after an hour and 38 minutes. The final score was 6-3, 7-6 (5).