Thorndon club tournament

I reached the quarter-finals of the men's singles with a 6-2 6-1 win over John O'Donnell. My opponent was number 3 seed Phil Seeman from the first team. He used to be top 10 in New Zealand and is still in pretty good shape as he's a black belt in karate.

I got out to a great start going 4-0 up. Phil then began to come back at me but I held on to take the first set 6-4. The second set was tight all the way through but Phil got it 6-4.

In the final set Phil got a break and was serving at 4-3. I then had a really good patch to win 10 points out of the next 11, and get to 5-4 up and 15-30 on Phil's serve. After spinning his leftie serve out wide all day Phil then came up with a big ace down the middle for 30-30. I got the next point to earn a match point at 30-40. Phil came up with another big serve down the middle and, even though I was half-expecting it this time, I still couldn't return it.

That was my only chance. Phil then saved that game. I held serve to go 6-5 up but Phil came back to 6-6. I went 0-40 down in my next service game, came back to have a game point, but then lost the game with a couple of errors. Phil then closed out the match 8-6 in the third with a very good final service game.

The whole match took around two and a half hours and I had cramps running up and down my legs for most of the third set. Phil's about 12 years older than me and I worked him as hard as I could but he just kept going! Very enjoyable match - I played as well as I could have hoped against a player ranked well above me, and on another day might have managed to close it out. But well done to Phil on a great effort. He now plays Nick White (the number 2 seed) in the semis.

The second team's last hope for a semis spot is Kris Funston. He's plays the number 4 seed Robbie Kirkness tomorrow, and that should be a very good game. The winner of that plays number 1 seed Marc Paulik.

I had to go straight back on court for my first round doubles with Andy Wheeler. We came through a close game with Mark Upton and Brian Francis 6-4 7-5. They played a very good match with Mark getting everything back and Brian serving so well that at one point he managed to hit me on the nose! Fortunately that seemed to put him off a bit and we finally managed to break him.