Results - Saturday August 15, 2009

Capdeville/Anderson Will Meet in Finals,
Ball/Van’t Hof Advance to Doubles Final

Paul Capdeville won the coin toss but chose to receive serve instead of serving first to start his semi-final match with South African Rik De Voest at the LG&T Tennis Challenger this afternoon. His strategy paid off as he broke serve to start the first set, then took command, holding his own serve to close out the first set 6-4.

The second set remained on serve at 6-6. In the tiebreaker, Capdeville started with a mini-break, then an ace and a hold to take a 3-0 lead With Capdeville leading 4-2, De Voest got a mini-break of his own to get back on serve. Then, serving at 3-4, De Voest committed 2 unforced errors in a row to give Capdeville a commanding 6-3 lead in the tiebreaker, which he quickly closed out to win the set and the match 6-4, 7-6(3).

Capdeville, the winner of the 2008 LG&T Tournament, had not won a match since May until coming to Binghamton, where he has now won 4 matches to earn his way into the final. According to Capdeville, he has finally recovered from a sore wrist that has been bothering him for the past few weeks, just in time for the upcoming US Open.

In the other singles semi-final match, Kevin Anderson, the number 7 seed from South Africa, had a thrilling match with Harel Levy, the number 6 seed from Israel. Anderson broke Levy’s serve early in the first set to take a 2-1 lead. That was all he needed to take the set 6-4. The second set was more complicated. Once again Anderson had an early break of service to go up 3-2. But, with Anderson on cruise control and serving at 4-3, he double-faulted 3 times in a row, resulting in not only losing the game and leveling the set at 4-all, but firing up the Israeli, who normally plays with great intensity as it is, even more. Anderson regained his composure, and with Levy serving, reeled off 4 straight points in the next game to get his 1 break advantage back again. Then, with Anderson serving for the match at 5-4, it looked like Levy might dig deep again when he ripped one of his Federer-like backhand passing shots down the line to even the game at 30 all. But Anderson responded with an ace, then captured the final point to win the set and the match 6-4, 6-4.

The unseeded doubles team of Carsten Ball (AUS) and Kaes Van’t Hof(USA) advanced to the doubles final tomorrow by defeating Kevin Anderson(RSA) and Ryler De Heart (USA) in a very entertaining match 6-3, 7-6(5). Both Ball and Van’t Hof were serving big, with each routinely reaching into the 125 miles per hour range, and the Anderson/De Heart team were not able to break serve during the match. In doubles competition, a 10 point 3rd set tiebreaker is played in lieu of a third set. In that tiebreaker Anderson, perhaps tiring from the singles semi-final that he played earlier, double-faulted twice. Ball and Van’t Hof took good care of their own serve, and won the tiebreak and the match 6-3, 6-7(5), 10-6.

This is only the second time this year that Ball and Van’t Hof have teamed up in doubles. They were paired in July at the Los Angeles Open, where they were defeated by Bob and Mike Bryan, the number 1 doubles team in the world, 5-7, 2-6.

Ball and Van’t Hof will face the number 1 seed doubles team of Rik De Voest (RSA) and Scott Lipsky ((USA) at noon tomorrow.