11-Nov, Day FOUR:
Round One to completion in Doha
The main draw of the 2013 edition of the Qatar Classic
continues at the Khalifa International Tennis & Squash
Complex in Doha with the bottom half of the draw. The end
result is that the top sixteen are all through to round two,
but of course there's more to it than that ...
ON THE BLOG:
Reports, quotes, photos .
Round One - bottom half:
Tom Richards (Eng) 3-2 [Q] Nafiizwan Adnan (Mas)
11/2, 11/4, 10/12,
7/11, 12/10 (91m)
Stephen Coppinger (Rsa) 3-2 [Q] Ryan Cuskelly (Aus)
7/11, 9/11,
11/7, 11/7, 11/6 (83m)
[6] Amr Shabana (Egy) 3-1 Saurav Ghosal (Ind)
11/9,
11/6, 6/11, 11/7 (55m)
[7] Borja Golan (Esp) 3-0 Nicolas Mueller (Sui)
11/7,
11/7, 11/8 (45m)
[1] Gregory Gaultier (Fra) 3-0 Simon Rosner (Ger)
11/9,
11/9, 11/3 (46m)
Cameron Pilley (Aus) 3-0 [Q] Joe Lee (Eng)
11/3,
11/3, 11/8 (43m)
[3] Nick Matthew (Eng) 3-0 Alister Walker (Bot)
11/8, 11/7, 12/10 (42m)
Miguel Angel Rodriguez (Col) 3-0 [Q] Max Lee (Hkg)
11/9, 11/5, 11/9 (41m)
Day Four Roundup:
 In
the first match of the day it looked as though Tom
Richards was going to see off Malaysian qualifier
Nafiizwan Adnan fairly quickly. Leading 2-0 and 8-5, the
Englishman saw that lead slip away as Adnan scored six
points in a row, going on to level the match. The decider
could have gone either way, but after 91 minutes it was the
Englishman who survived, just.
 The
next match also saw a player fail to capitalise on a
two-game lead, but qualifier Ryan Cuskelly couldn’t refind
his early winning form as South African Steve Coppinger
completed a comeback that took 83 minutes with Cuskelly
finally running out of steam in the fifth.
 Amr
Shabana and Borja Golan brought the schedule back
on track with wins over Saurav Ghosal and Nicolas Mueller,
both less than an hour but neither were they easy.
The evening session opened with top seed Gregory Gaultier
maintained his unbeaten record against Simon Rosner. The
German stayed right with Gaultier until the very end of the
first two games before the Frenchman ran away with the
third.
Cameron Pilley ran away with his first two games
against Joe Lee, but the English qualifier picked up his
game and made the big Aussie work hard for his eventual
three-nil win - the game splits were 7, 7 and 24 minutes!
 Newly
recrowned world champion Nick Matthew also looked to
be running away with his match against Alister Walker, but
the Botswanan fought back from a big deficit in the second,
narrowly failing to draw level, and made the third tough all
the way before the Englishman closed it out on extra points.
The finals match of the day was the last chance for a first
round upset, but Hong Kong’s Max Lee suffered the fate of
several of his fellow qualifiers, making Miguel Angel
Rodriguez work for his win, but the Colombian
nevertheless closed it out in three games.
Tuesday’s second round features the last sixteen,
again starting at noon.
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