Promising Ignatic ©ProSport / S. Wake

By the end of Day 9 of The Championships all of the first round boys’ singles matches that were due to start last Saturday had been completed. We now take a look at the top contenders in the boys’ singles event to see how they fared in their belated first round matches.

David Rice, the tall 18-year-old British No.1, battled his way to victory against Venezuelan Roberto Maytin in two tough sets, 6-4, 7-5. The players had to contend with a rain delay mid-way through the opening set and when play resumed it was Rice who broke the Venezuelan at 4-4 to serve for the set, which the tall Englishman did emphatically.

But the Venezuelan signalled to his opponent early in the second set that he still had some fight left in him, going 2-0 up and forcing the Briton to deal with his nerves and cut down the number of unforced errors. At 2-2 Rice fought well and pulled back the deficit only to lose his service game immediately after he had done the hard work of getting the second set level on serve.

It seemed that neither player wanted to win the set, with both suffering occasional lapses of concentration on serve as the match approached 5-5. Rice was able to keep his serves in good shape as the set drew to a close, and he also went head-to-head with the Venezuelan in the long baseline exchanges, often using his superior reach to finish the points at the net.

Maytin was unable to stop Rice from winning the match as the British player piled on the pressure at the right time to avoid the tie-break and secure a place in the second round.

Donald Young, the 17-year-old third seed and a semi-finalist in this event last year, routinely disposed of British wild card Neil Pauffley 6-2, 6-3 with a display of power and accuracy that demonstrated the sharper edge to his game due to his appearances on the ATP Tour. The American won 91% of the points on his first serve and 67% of the points on his second serve.

The second set was a little tighter, with Young frustrated by the valiant fightback of the Berkshire-based player, who had started to compete with a lot more determination, keeping the match level by lifting his own serve and forcing the American to work harder to hold serve.

In the eighth game of the set Young was gifted two break points, which he gladly received, and serving comfortably he booked his place in the second round after 53 minutes of play.

The No.1 seed in the boy’s singles, French Open boy’s champion, Vladimir Ignatik hardly broke sweat in his comfortable win against Thomas Schoorel of the Netherlands winning 6-3, 6-1.

The Belarussian held on to 92% of his first serves and 75% of his second serves and used his counter-attacking returns of serve to good effect, converting four out of five break points to move one step closer to winning back-to-back junior Grand Slams.

Standing in Ignatik's way is second seed Italian Matteo Trevisan, who has reached the final in five out of his last seven junior tournaments, including the semi-finals of the French Open. In contrast to his fellow top seeds, the Italian struggled in the first two sets against Slovenian Aljaz Bedene, but rolled out 10 points in-a-row to win the tie-break without losing a single point.

Rupesh Roy, India’s hope for this year, valiantly battled from behind to avoid an early exit at the hands of unranked British wild card Sean Thornley. Thornley took the first set from Roy 7-5, having trailed 3-5. At 5-5 in the second set Thornley was within two points of a major upset but the Indian boy took the set to a tie-break and then captured a long third set to win 5-7, 7-6 (7-4), 10-6.

Written by Michael Burke-Velji

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