I didn't know how to spell it or where it was, but our next match was against Wainuiomata (or just Wainui). They turned out to be over the hill and far away around the harbour. Quite a nice club but with some seriously sandy astro courts, which are not our favourite.
Kris and I had a serious wobble towards the end of our first set but steadied the ship to win our doubles 7-6 6-1 against Keall/Dowman. Richard and Chris 'Epic' Patete lost 7-6 1-6 7-5 to McIntrye/Samuels.
I had the first of what would prove to be a series of three set singles matches. My topspin game was seriously off kilter on the sandy astro and I lost the first set 6-4 against Lance Keall. I started to play a lot more slice and took the second set by the same score. Lance seemed to tired in the third set, with his patience fraying in the face of all this slice, and I got it 6-0.
Richard bounced back from his doubles with a dominant 6-4 6-0 win against Earl Dowman. Brian had a hard time against Richard Samuels, who was smashing his forehands, and went down 6-2 6-3.
The last match on court by some distance was Kris against Alister McIntyre. Kris got the first set 6-3 but lost the second by the same margin. There were some huge rallies in the third set with both guys playing very steady games. Every time Kris surged forward he seemed to get lobbed, but then would run them down and the rally would start again. Alister was clearly cramping toward the end but continued to play well and forced a final set TB. Alister then played an excellent TB to take the match and end Kris' fine run of 13 consecutive singles wins.
It made sense that if anyone beat Kris it would be 7-6 in the third. Kris wasn't quite at his best and we knew he'd bounce back, more determined than ever. Fortunately the set he picked up meant we won the match overall on sets countback, so his efforts certainly weren't in vain.
A third win for us, and we were playing all the teams from last year's Premier 1 Promotion league first. We were starting to talk cautiously about trying to make the final.
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