Tom Walsh (ENG) 3-2 [8] Simon Herbert (ENG) 11-7, 5-11, 14-12, 10-12, 11-9 (75m)
A bit like the Adrian/Emyr match, this encounter for me was troubled by the official – court 1. But if earlier, the outcome of the match was not altered by the decisions, I feel that on this occasion, Simon might have won had the decisions been more conform to what the players, coaches and your servant thought they should be.
Now, it is what it is, but the last game saw strokes for Simon turned into lets at crucial times, and lets or actually no lets turned into strokes for Tom. At some point (9/8 for Simon), the decision was struck against Simon, with two top 15 players and a prominent coach going whhhhhhaaaaaaaa at the same time. And don’t start me on the match ball, it’s never a let for Simon, it’s a stroke, which would have allowed him to go 10/10.
Still, Tom didn’t do anything wrong, he didn’t try and influence the ref, the official did it all by himself, bless him.
It was 75m of intense rallies, absolutely ridiculously fast paced rallies between two players of the same zone in the rankings, Simon Herbert, 24, WR57, and Tom Walsh (coached by Jasmine Hutton today), 26, WR66. Both attacking whatever they could, retrieving incredible shots, the match was intense from the first to the last rally.
The fourth game was very intense again, 14m, with both players neck to neck until the end of the game, 1/1, 2/2, 3/3, 4/4, 5/5, then 4 match balls for Tom, from 10/6, all saved by Simon who scored 7 points in a row to clinch it, 12/10.
The fifth started with Simon taking a great lead keeping with the momentum of the previous game, 4/0, 5/2. Did he relaxed a bit too early? Or was it a bit of tiredness from the previous game, having saved 4 match balls? 4 errors from 5/3 to 7/5, that hurts…
8/8, 9/9, this time, only one match ball is enough, and it’s 11/9 for Tom in 12m.
Tom : “It was a good one to win. I like to think that I put in a good summer and I found myself up match balls in the fourth, and the fourth didn’t go the way it was supposed to. In my mind I tried to fall across it, rather than earning the right to get across it.
“At 4-0 down in the fifth game I realised I had to put together some serious rallies to get myself back in, but I trusted myself and trusted my game. I got the head down and found a way through.“In the off-season I have put in the hours, and I have put the work in. It paid off in that sense today.“I wasn’t particularly happy with how last season went. I gave myself ample opportunities but I didn’t take them. I had to change a few things, which I feel I have done. Maybe last season I would have lost that deciding game 11-9 in the fifth. At the end of the day, it’s a big difference between winning and losing. Today I found myself on the right side of that which was great. It’s a quarter-final tomorrow which I believe I can win so I’ve already seen physio, I’ll rest up well and go again tomorrow.”
