Kiranpal Pannu held serve comfortably to start his first round match against left-handed fifth seed Ryan Peniston In Drummondville this morning, and then hit a fabulous backhand return down the line when he won his only point in the British player’s first turn serving. The third game was the crunch one for Pannu where, although he hit a beautiful forehand down the line to win the opening point, a forehand into the net gave away a break point. He saved that with a beautiful inside-out forehand winner, but swung his next forehand into the tramlines before a beautiful backhand lob from Peniston completed the break.
The two players lost just one point each in the next two games before Peniston held to love, starting and finishing with his only two aces of the match. He held to love next time round as well, after taking two points off Pannu, which left the New Zealander needing to hold serve to stay in the set. It couldn’t have gone worse for Pannu, who hit four forehand unforced errors to lose the game to love, and the set was over after 32 minutes.
Pannu then disappeared for more than ten minutes before returning to resume play, only to see Peniston hold to love after starting the second set with a beautiful angled backhand drop volley. Peniston made it 16 points in a row when he again broke Pannu to love, although it was four more unforced errors from Pannu which sealed his own fate. The longest rally I’ve seen in ages came in the next game, Pannu being forced to hit a forehand into the net on the 36th shot, but forced and unforced errors from Peniston gave the New Zealander a break point. He ended a great rally by hitting the 14th shot over the baseline, but got the break back by ending a great short rally with possibly the shot of the match, a fabulous backhand lob.
Pannu couldn’t sustain the momentum in the next game, giving away another break point with a backhand into the net before losing a good rally when forced to hit a backhand into the tramlines. More forced errors cost Pannu three points in the next game, Peniston completing the hold with an inside-out forehand winner, and he put more pressure on Pannu in what became the longest game of the match. Only one earlier game had got to deuce, but this one had three of them. Pannu had to save a break point to get to the first after dumping a backhand in the net, and aced Peniston out wide to get to the second after giving away a second break point in the same way as the first. He hit a double fault after the third deuce, however, and ended a great 15 shot rally with a poor attempt at a backhand drop shot which went into the net. The game had lasted for just over six and a half minutes.
Peniston was now serving for the match, but Pannu wasn’t done just yet. He hit a beautiful forehand return down the line to take the third point, and saved the first match point with a fabulous forehand winner down the left sideline to end a great rally. That took them to deuce, where Peniston was forced to hit a backhand volley into the net to give away a break point. He saved that when forcing Pannu to hit a forehand into the net at the end of another great rally, and two forced return errors finally got him the win after an hour and 17 minutes. The final score was 6-3, 6-1.