Saturday: Boys Round One

It’s Saturday, and the World Juniors is finally under way today in Doha. Starting at 13.00 we had six courts in action for the boys’ first round, 45 matches in all with the top seeds all receiving byes.

There were no seeded casualties today, and just two matches went the full five games. The first match on the glass court was one of those, with Germany’s Lucas Wirths surviving what proved to be the longest match of the day as he overcame South African Ruan Olivier 11/9 in the decider after exactly an hour.

The other five-setter was one minute shorter but also finished 11/9 in the fifth, with Colombian Nicolas Valderrama coming through that tussle.

It was a disappointing day for the hosts with all the Qatar players losing, leaving just Abdulla Mohd Al Tamimi, a 9/12 seed, to carry the home flag into tomorrow’s round of 32.

Below you can find snippets of the action on “MishMash“, lots of photos in the Gallery, and reports from the English and hopefully some other countries later on …

English debutants off to a winning start