A mid-match injury to one of University of Sheffield’s key players allowed Sheffield Hallam to grab a draw in the men’s tennis tie.
In university tennis, each player in a team of four plays one singles and one doubles match. The headline matchup of the day was Uni’s Dylan Smith facing off against Hallam captain Alex Jinks.
Smith started well, dominating the first set and winning 6-3, and in the second found his groove and took it in a similar fashion.
In the deciding set Jinks looked strong, but Smith pulled up with cramp in his leg. He continued after a few minutes, with some encouragement and excellent sportsmanship from Jinks. However, he was clearly hampered, and Jinks took the victory 6-3 in the final set.
After the match, Jinks said: “It’s cruel, I want to win on my own merit, but at the end of the day you’ve got to get the job done, and get the points on the board for your team.”
The doubles match involving Smith and Jinks had to be forfeited by Uni of, as they were a player down, handing Hallam that point.
Smith’s doubles partner Arun Bahia cruised past Hallam’s Adam Pyatt-Coppell in straight-sets on the next court. The players were a stark contrast to each other, as Bahia calmly slotted home each shot, while Pyatt-Coppell got increasingly furious as the game wore on, bellowing and launching his racquet after any significant error, and firing off some vicious serves.
The first set went down to a tie-break, Bahia coming through to take the set, and he ran away with the match in the second, winning the second set 6-0.
On the other side of the tie, Uni of captain Carlos Suarez and doubles partner Mohamed Safwat kicked off the day with a narrow straight-set win over Hallam’s Kyle Jones and Cameron Wood.
After a bright first game for Suarez, even brighter than his vibrant orange trainers, the match became a tense affair, with control of the game tossing between the two pairs repeatedly. Despite superb returns from Wood and Jones’ consistently excellent serve, tie breaks were needed on both sets, and Safwat came into his own in those situations to settle things.
The even nature of the tie continued into the singles matches, as Suarez and Wood, and Safwat and Jones traded sets, both going into a third decider. Safwat saw off Jones first, and all the attention was then focussed on one final game, where Wood used all his stamina to beat an exhausted Suarez to level the overall score and rescue a result for Hallam.
The overall scoreline was 3-3.