After a long day of tennis, featuring the doubles and singles in both the ‘Open’ and ‘Woman’s’ formats, York’s first seed in the Open Singles, Misha Neverov faced off against Lancaster’s captain Aidan Yates. Both players had a technically accurate game, not quite possessing the power serves of Lancaster’s Ryan Teesdale and York’s Arthur Ferrar in the second seed fixture, but were certainly the more all-rounded players. In the first game, Yates could not pressure Neverov on the serve and double faulted at 15-40 down to give Neverov the first game. However, in the second game after some great rallies with both players pushing each other to the edges Yates broke back to level the scores at one-all. Neverov stepped up a notch and broke Yates for the second time before holding his serve to reach a 1-4 lead.
Play had to stop for Neverov to switch rackets but this did not stop his momentum and there was little Yates could do to prevent the first set going to York 0-1 at 1-6.
In the second set, it looked as Neverov was going to win this match at a canter, as accuracy was letting Yates down, despite holding his serve at the first time of asking. However Neverov held his serve and broke the Lancastrian to reach a 1-3 lead. In the fifth game Yates pushed back to force a deuce, with some great slicing backhands that had Neverov slipping on the still wet surface from the morning rain. Yates couldn’t capitalise and Neverov held for 1-4. Yates sensed momentum and upped his serving game, winning the sixth game to close the gap to 2-4 giving Yates a sniff at a comeback to level the game in the second set. And he nearly capitalised, again the following game on Neverov’s serve went to deuce, but the Yorkist shackled himself from this momentary complacency to hold for 2-5. Yates did well to save two match points to hold for 3-5, again through another deuce, nevertheless Neverov was always in control and held his serve to win 3-6 and thus the match.
Despite this victory, it was not enough for York as Teesdale beat Ferrar in a highly entertaining and intense fixture to seal overall victory for Lancaster 5-4 in the Open Tennis. This gave Lancaster four points as they closed in on victory in the Roses competition by Saturday night. The UTYC still did really well, winning the Women’s Firsts earlier on Saturday and the Open 2nds on Friday meaning they won more Roses points than they lost.