Dane Sweeny held to love to start the match when he and Matthew Romios played Ajeet Rai and Calum Puttergill in the first round of doubles at the Playford Challenger yesterday, with Rai losing just one point when he followed the blond Australian to the serving line. The first real action came when Romios served, with a fantastic rally on the second point which Romios lost when he sent a cross-court backhand into the tramlines. Another great rally three points later ended with Puttergill being forced to hit a backhand into the net, but the one that came next was the best in the match. It lasted for 19 shots, Sweeny hitting a nice inside-out forehand volley to close out the game.
Puttergill lost a fantastic rally on his own first point when he overhit a forehand, but his partner won another great rally with a beautiful forehand volley through the middle of the court. A volley into the net from Puttergill cost him the first deuce of the match, but Sweeny only just got a touch of his racquet to the wide serve on the deciding point. It was Sweeny’s turn to go to deuce when he had to save a break point after hitting a forehand over the baseline. Puttergill’s forehand return went into the net, and Rai was forced to hit a backhand volley there as well to lose the deciding point. Puttergill and Sweeny continued the sequence of holds, and that left Rai serving to stay in the set.
They started with a good rally, which Puttergill won with a fabulous cross-court forehand volley, and Rai hit a lovely forehand lob two points later. A forehand into the net from Sweeny made it 40-15, but Romios then hit a beautiful inside-out backhand return before Sweeny got them to deuce with a fabulous forehand return down the singles sideline. The deciding point was a set point as well, but Rai gave that away when he hit a forehand over the baseline to end the set after 33 minutes.
It took until the fourth game of the second set before the serving team lost a point, although we had seen a wonderful lob from Sweeny to win his first point in the third game, and a fantastic rally two points later which Romios won by smashing away a volley. Unforced errors by Romios when he served the fifth game, either side of a forehand winner down the tramlines from Puttergill, meant that his team was suddenly at 0-40. Puttergill’s next return went into the net, but there was an uproar on the next point when Rai and Puttergill protested that the serve from Romios was long, and should have been called a fault instead of the server winning the point from Rai’s return error. The protest was certainly valid – I replayed the serve a dozen times, and it must have landed at least three or four ball widths past the service line – but umpire Quincy Davis was unmoved. I felt that justice had been done when Romios lost a great rally on the next point after being forced into an error, and that gave Rai and Puttergill the break that they needed.
The next two games went with serve before Rai stepped up, and three winning points were followed by a serve that went off the net cord and was called a fault – by the umpire, not either of the line judges. Again, I replayed this plenty of times, and Mr Davis had it truly wrong, as the ball clearly landed completely clear of the lines in the outside corner of the service box. Rai lost the second serve when he overhit a forehand, but the rest of the game belonged to Sweeny. A forehand volley that he hit straight into Puttergill was followed by a beautiful inside-out forehand return to get to deuce, and he won the deciding point with a wonderful jump to hit an overhead volley that landed on the baseline. All that good work to retrieve the break went out the window when he lost his serve in the next game, hitting a cross-court backhand volley wide to lose the great rally on the final point.
Puttergill now had a chance to serve out the set, but he and Rai lost the first two points before Sweeny hit a beautiful inside-out forehand winner to get break points. Rai saved the first with a fabulous overhead volley, but a double fault made the scores level again. Sweeny had a comfortable hold to leave Rai serving to stay in the match and, although Sweeny and Romios each hit a beautiful forehand winner, Puttergill won the incredible rally on the last point with a beautiful angled backhand volley.
As I wrote last night, all hell broke loose after the first point in the tie-break when Puttergill’s forehand shot was called long by the umpire at the far end of the court from the camera. Once again the baseline judge had remained silent, so Puttergill, who can occasionally be somewhat volatile, gave the umpire a piece of his mind – and got penalised a point for it, as he had already been given a warning. Unlike the other disputed points, I couldn’t get a clear sense of where the ball had landed when I replayed it because it was simply too far away and at the wrong angle to be seen from a centrally-mounted camera. Play was stopped for around seven minutes while the tournament referee was called, and Puttergill was certainly still more than a bit miffed when they restarted.
He did win the one point that he had left, and the next three went with serve as well, but Rai lost his second point after they changed ends when he was forced to hit a backhand wide. He then tried a lob off Romios, which went long and gave away four match points, before hitting a forehand over the baseline to end the match after an hour and 25 minutes. The final score was 6-4, 7-6 (2). Next week all four players will be in Sydney, where Rai is provisionally the fifth seed in the qualifying draw.