Finn Reynolds and James Watt won the toss in the doubles final in Shenzhen and elected to serve, but the strange thing was that top seeds Nathaniel Lammons and Jen-Julien Rojer then decided to swap ends before the start. It’s something we often see on a bright, sunny day, but at night? That was a truly weird decision.
Rojer started the highlights package with a beautiful cross-court forehand volley and, when Reynolds was forced to hit a backhand volley over the baseline, the New Zealanders were facing break points. Watt saved the first with the type of unreturnable serve we’ve come to expect from the very tall right-hander, and Reynolds got them to deuce with a cross-court smash. Rojer got the deciding point back in play, but a cross-court forehand volley from Reynolds spared any early blushes.
Lammons held slightly more comfortably before Rojer hit a fabulous cross-court forehand return off Reynolds. The left-hander was forced to give away another deuce when his forehand shot went pretty much straight up in the air, but again the partner came to the rescue on the deciding point, Watt smashing away a cross-court volley to win the game.
He added a beautiful inside-out forehand return off Rojer, but that only saved the first game point. Watt’s best shot on the night was possibly the fabulous inside-out forehand drop shot into the tramlines that he played in the next game, but he dropped himself back to deuce by losing the next point with a forehand into the net. The fantastic rally on the deciding point ended after ten shots when Lammons was forced to hit a forehand volley into the net, and he held comfortably again next up to level the scores once more.
Reynolds then held to love, acing Lammons down the centre both times. The American protested loudly about the second ace, claiming that it was faulty, but I replayed it several times and it actually landed quite clearly (in tennis terms) inside the corner of the service box. It was a bit disappointing, though, that the speed gun, which wasn’t firing on every serve, stayed quiet for both those aces, as the second one looked to be close to the fastest serve of the night.
The remaining games in the set all went with serve, the only real highlights coming when Reynolds served for the last time. Watt won the good short rally on the first point with a beautiful cross-court backhand volley, while Rojer hit a fabulous inside-out backhand return that landed very close to the sideline. He held to love in the final game, so they were off to a tie-break.
Lammons lost his second point by smashing a volley into the net, and they didn’t get that mini-break back until Rojer hit another fabulous return of serve, this one a forehand down the tramlines off Watt which appeared to just catch the baseline. Watt promptly fired off a fabulous return against Lammons, this one an inside-out forehand into the tramlines, and that gave the New Zealanders two set points. Lammons aced Reynolds down the centre to save the first, but he wasn’t good enough to safely return Reynolds’ serve of the next point, his cross-court backhand attempt going into the net. The set had taken 49 minutes.
The second set had far less drama through the early stages, with Lammons and Rojer each holding to love and Watt and Reynolds dropping only a single point. Despite lasting only nine shots, the incredible rally in Lammons’ second game was the best in the match, but it ended with a whimper when Rojer hit a cross-court backhand into the net. Lammons aced Reynolds out wide to end the game, with Watt then holding to love before hitting his forehand return of Rojer’s last serve into the net.
Reynolds also held to love, the standout shot being Watt’s huge stretch to hit a fabulous forehand volley onto the baseline, and they had a royal chance to put the match in their hands when forehands into the net from Rojer and Lammons took the top seeds to 0-40 on the American’s serve. Reynolds was then forced to hit an inside-out forehand wide before Lammons ended another great rally with a beautiful inside-out forehand volley, and he aced Watt out Watt to get to deuce.
Watt was even more disappointed when Lammons repeated that shot to win the deciding point, claiming that the serve was a fault, but I replayed it when it happened and again just now while writing this report, and it was perfectly fine. Watt then hit an overhead forehand into the net on his own serve to give away a deuce, and that also gave the top seeds their first set point. Reynolds ended the great short rally on the deciding point with a cross-court forehand volley, but Rojer held comfortably again to leave Reynolds serving to keep his team in the set.
Rojer started that game with another fabulous return of serve, this one to the left of centre, while Lammons took the fourth point with a stunning forehand return of his own. An easy forehand volley from Watt gave the New Zealanders a game point, but Rojer hit an overhead volley straight into Watt to force another deuce. It was a second set point for Lammons and Rojer, and again the latter came up with a terrific cross-court forehand return into the tramlines to end the set after 39 minutes. Given the circumstances, I felt that this had to be the shot of the match.
There was controversy early in the match tie-break when a volley from Lammons rebounded off Reynolds over the net, with neither of his opponents bothering to hit it back before Rojer caught the ball after it bounced, his hands already raised in apology. Umpire Rosario Corvaia awarded the point to Reynolds and Watt, believing that it had come off Reynolds’ racquet, but Lammons and Rojer protested vehemently that it had come off his chest.
Reynolds won a round of applause from the crowd when he confirmed that that was what had happened and conceding the point, with that mini-break being the only one before the first change of ends. Reynolds then lost the point after they swapped around when he hit a cross-court backhand wide, and they didn’t get that one back either before they changed over for the second time. Reynolds’s forehand return of Rojer’s next serve went over the baseline, giving the top seeds five Championship points, and the match ended when Reynolds double faulted to lose the first of those.
The final score was 6-7 (5), 7-5, 10-4, with the match lasting for an hour and 44 minutes. While they may not have been able to win their third title in as many weeks, Reynolds and Watt still made huge strides in their respective careers by entering the top 100 for the first time. Their goal of entering the Australian Open is still well on the cards, with my guess being that they will need another 250 to 300 ranking points to make that a certainty.
Although I don’t expect them to win every week, there are 500 points available in Challenger tournaments in Asia and Australia before the end of the season. To get to the cut-off they will need to win at least one of those, and preferably two, with a mixture of finals and semi-finals making up the balance. They are second seeds this coming week in Suzhou, and should be ranked no worse than that in the remaining tournaments as well, meaning that they would be expected to make the final every time.