by I played a crazy match yesterday in the round-robin singles competition against an opponent with shot-making and firepower in abundance, although he can lack composure and can struggle against players who vary their games. He has a tendency to get very vocal on the court, to the point where it can put off opponents and even people on other courts. He led 40-0 on his serve in the opening game, but I reeled off five straight points to break him. That was about as good as it got for me in the early stages. Six of the first seven games went to deuce, but really I was being overpowered and starved of time. The double faults weren’t helping me. I lost the first set 6-2 and found myself in a deep pit at 1-4, 0-30 in the second set, half a dozen points from a thrashing. After my encouraging performance on Wednesday night I’d expected to have a close match, but here I was on the verge of an embarrassment. I was even losing games I felt I’d played well in. I felt out of ideas against a player full of confidence who could smell the finish line. I won four points in a row to close to 2-4 and broke him in the next game. At 3-4 I crucially held from 0-40. At 4-5 I led 40-0, got taken to deuce, but won the next two points to stay alive. Then at 5-6 I faced a match point. My second serve was so slow as to catch him by surprise: he ballooned his return well over the baseline. I clung on to force a tie-break. In truth I didn’t play a great tie-break but neither did he, and I won it 7-5 to level the match despite being outplayed for the best part of an hour. I won the first game of the final set but fell 3-1 behind as he seemed to get a second wind. In contrast I was flat and making too many unforced errors; I was almost wishing I’d lost that match point. But I clawed my way back once more to lead 5-4. In the final game he powered three first serves to my forehand on the ad side. The first two I could do nothing with, but on the third, the match point, I got an outstretched arm to the ball and he netted to end a protracted rally and give me a highly unexpected (and fortunate) win after two hours and five minutes.
I’ve come back from the brink before, but as for being on the verge of an absolute shellacking and coming back to win, no, that’s a first. Assuming a 50% probability of winning every point, I had only a 3% chance of winning the match at 1-4 and 0-30 in the second set. At match point down, and virtually out, my chances were actually twice as good as that. It’s hard to know how realistic that 50% assumption is though. At 2-6 1-4, and being badly outplayed, I doubt I was an even chance to win each point, but once I’d got to 4-4 the momentum had probably carried me to 50% or even a shade higher.
