Mark Lajal holds on to reach round two in South Carolina ATP tournament
Estonia's top tennis player Mark Lajal took a hard fought, 1–6, 6–3, 7–5 victory in round one of the Serve First Open over U.S. player Strong Kirchheimer.
The competition, an ATP Challenger-level event, is taking place in Sumter, South Carolina, and is one of several warmers for the U.S. Open later this month, which Lajal must go through qualifying for.
This was no less than the sixth game this year the Estonian, now ranked a career-high 150th in the world, has come back from an opening set loss to go on to win.
At 30, Kirchheimer is eight years Lajal's senior, and ranks 510 places below him in the ATP listings.
However, he showed excellent play before a home crowd, racing to a 6–1 win in set one, which was wrapped up in less than half an hour.
Lajal committed as many as 13 unforced errors in the set.
The Estonian managed to find his game in set two, though, breaking the American's serve with things at 3–2 in games. He then went ahead 5–2 up, and only dropped one more game before taking the set and forcing a decider set.
That third set started off evenly enough, exchanging game wins until things were 5–5. Crucially, Lajal managed his second service break game at that point, and held his serve in the next, dropping the first match point he was presented with but winning the next one, and with it the match.
The stats show Lajal hit two aces, but committed as many as nine double faults, through the match, to Kirchheimer's four aces and two double faults. The Estonian hit 39 winners and made 39 unforced errors, to Kirchheimer's 20 winners and 42 unforced errors.
Lajal next faces the tournament top seed, Belgium's Zizou Bergs (ATP 54). The pair met at the 's-Hertogenbosch tournament in the Netherlands in June, with Bergs getting a straight sets win that time.
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Editor: Kristjan Kallaste, Andrew Whyte
