Cedric Meissner (Photo WTT)
Cedric Meissner knocked out No.13 seed Akash Pal after the two played out a crazy 54-point game in the qualifiers of the WTT Star Contender in Doha. Meissner won the match 8-11, 28-26, 8-11, 11-4, 11-5.
Meissner, ranked World No. 125, lost the first game and was 2-6 down in the second before chaos ensued. With the scores tied at 10-10, Meissner scuppered seven game points in a row before Pal threw away three of his own. Meissner would go on to miss four more, and Pal two, before the game finished 28-26.
Pal was then trailing for most of the third game but came from behind twice to regain his lead. But Meissner, having seemingly recovered from the rollercoaster second game, turned on the style in Game Four, going 5-1 up before taking it with six consecutive winners.
He carried that form into the final game, hitting four without reply and winning by a convincing 11-5.
Mongolia’s Tarvachinbo Buyan was the only unranked player to win in the first round, breaking local hearts by beating Qatar’s Rawad Alnaser 11-9, 8-11, 13-11, 7-11, 11-8.
Over in the Women’s Singles, unranked player Arina Slautina came close to pulling off an upset in her match against World No.196 Vlada Voronina, before losing out 11-8, 9-11, 7-11, 11-9, 7-11. .
Slautina won the first game and recovered from going 2-1 down to force a deciding fifth game. In that final game, Slautina saved five game points as she tried to fight her way back from 10-5 down, but the deficit proved too much to overcome. .
Qqualifying draw’s No.6 seed, Maria Xiao, also narrowly avoided a giant killing, as Lilou Massar, who is ranked World No. 203 and more than 100 places below the Spaniard, almost pulled off a monumental comeback. Xiao won the match 11-2, 11-6, 11-13, 7-11, 11-4.
Taking the first two games by comfortable margins, it appeared that Xiao was in cruise control and had all but confirmed her spot in the second qualifying round. But Massart launched a late comeback, and with the scores in the third game tied at 9-9, the Belgian stopped Xiao from getting to Match Point and converted her Game Point at the third time of asking.
Riding that wave of momentum, Massart put in a strong game four to level things up. But her efforts would turn out to be in vain as Xiao put in an utterly dominant fifth game performance, scoring eight points from a possible 10 in the latter stages.
