Apath - Patko.
7-6 (5) 4-6 7-6 (3)
6-7 (5) 7-6 (9).
Well that was an extremely tough match, he must of hit over 20 aces and his service was quite hard to read.
1st set, went to duece on his first service but held, then went according to serve and i was surprised at how well he backed up his service with powerful groundstrokes being put away. Then comes the tiebreak, i had a mini-break for 3-0 and then went according to serve, was tight.
2nd set he broke me early on with some great returns and nice risk play during the important points and i couldn't touch his serve in this set and he served it out.
3rd set we both held serve comfortably until the breaker of which i got a couple of mini breaks and served it out, bit of a lottery again.
4th set we both held serve until around 4-4, then i changed my reurns a bit and had 3 consecutive bp's to serve it out but although i played passive on the first 1, he managed to come up with the great shots and won 5 points in a row to hold serve, and then came the breaker of which he played better and held serve and played a great breaker.
5th set, we both hold serve with not much drama until the breaker. He played well and got the mini break, he had match points at 6-3 with me serving and i came up with 2 good serves and then somehow i got the mini break back and clawed it back.
Overall, i'm very lucky to get out of this one, much respect to patko7, he was definitely a different player to early 2009 and he will be hard to beat in the coming months, very impressive.
~1