Matt Donald is through to the next round at the ITF tournament in Heraklion after Oleg Prihodko had to retire from their quarter-final. The Ukrainian had just won a knife-edge second set tie-break, during which he saved three match points, so I imagine that he must be extremely disappointed at not having a chance to see if he could win a deciding set. Donald got away to a flying start, winning the first four games, but the remaining games all went to the receiver. Donald had five set points on his own serve in the seventh game, but Prihodko could win only one of his own points in the eighth. The set took 35 minutes.
Prihodko started the second set with a rush, winning Donald’s first three service points, but the teenager battled back to the first of what became five deuces, and saved three more break points before finally holding serve. He had to save two more break points in the third game, but succumbed to the pressure in the fifth game when Prihodko broke to love. Donald broke back in the eighth game, saved another break point in the eleventh, and saved two game points in the twelfth before Prihodko was able to force a tie-break.
It was another of those ones where holding serve was difficult, as Donald started with a double fault and Prihodko hit one as well to lose his second point. Donald lost the first of his next pair of points, and Prihodko the second, with Donald hitting another double fault on his fifth point. He got that mini-break straight back, and then came four points in a row where they both held serve. The last of those meant that Prihodko had just saved a first match point, but he lost his next serve to give Donald a second – and he served another double fault.
He did win his second point to bring up match point number three, but Prihodko won both his serves, either side of the third change of ends, and that gave him a first set point. He converted that to send them to a decider, but that was the end of the match after an hour and 59 minutes. The final score was 6-2, 6-7 (9). Unfortunately there’s no live streaming, so I have no idea what happened. In the semi-finals Donald will play the sixth seed, Sidane Pontjodikromo from the Netherlands, who had a much easier day when he won his quarter-final by a walkover.