27 June 6:30 pm

Phew! I pulled it through with a tough win 7-6,6-4 over Boyan Wang from China.

Today was a weird schedule and I did not plan it very well. My match was 3rd after 10 am.The first match finished at 1 p.m and the 2nd match finished only at 3:15 pm. I did not eat much before the match and so felt a bit weak in the end.

But all said and done,I got up to a 3-0 lead. My opponent was a teeny-weeny firecracker. She started to really play after 3 games where she would step in and return my serve with ease and deflect it away from me. When someone takes the ball so early, the ball just takes off. Many points, she would reel winners left and right. She broke my serve at 3-0 and held hers for 3-2. I then steeped up and held my serve to go for a 4-2 and then a 5-3 lead. She held her serve and then came the worst game possibly of my match. I served for the set at 5-4 and until then, I was serving fairly well. I didn’t double fault…until then. Call it nerves, call it lack of matches, whatever the hell it was, it wasn’t good. I served 2 double faults that game and then she leveled the match at 5-5. She held her serve and so I served to stay in the 1 set. That game was a very long service game of mine, where I decided to take the pace off and hit my 1st serve it. I think that’s what won me my set and the match eventually. I served to her body, but actually did stare at the barrel of 2 set points. I clung on somehow and brought it to a tie-break.

Tiebreak was a smooth ride and she made 2 double faults and I won it at 7-1. The second set was fairly straight forward with us holding serves for the most part and I clinching it at 5-4. Small drama there was when she served 15-40, my string broke and she saved one match point. But I probably played the best point of the second set at 30-40 and cliniched the set and match. That surely was a relief. My amtch was about 2 ½ hrs long.Next up is my final round of qualifying which will be the 2nd match tomorrow against Xin Ji. Let’s see how my body holds up. This will be a good test.