Bernard beats Reid at Maccabi
Bernard plays a backhand against Matt Reid.
Rob O’Gorman
tennis.com.au
Bernard has moved into the quarterfinals of the Maccabi Men’s Challenger with a win over Matt Reid at East Bentleigh today.
Reid, who will head to Thailand next week as a hitting partner with the Optus Australian Davis Cup team, secured an early break to race to a 4-2 lead in the first set.
The 16 year old Tomic managed to break back and level at 4-4 before taking the set in a tiebreak 7-6(3).
He then raced away to take the second set 6-1 and secure his place in the last eight of the USD$50,000 event.
Tomic said he knew if he could break back and force the first set into a tiebreak he had a good chance of winning the set and the match.
“I’ve played about 10 tiebreaks this year and I don’t think I’ve lost one so that’s a good sign,” he told tennis.com.au
“I needed that break back, which I got, so I was really happy I got through that first set.”
“I played pretty good in the second set and it [the win] has given me a lot of confidence.”
The teenager will play either Japanese top seed Go Soeda or Toshihide Matsui , also from Japan, in the quarterfinals.
It will be Tomic’s second consecutive appearance in a quarterfinal of a Challenger tournament after he reached the same stage in Burnie two weeks ago.
“I’ve played [Toshihide] Mitsuhashi before and beat him in Burnie 6-3 in the third so I’ll hope that he gets through but if not I’ll have to play the No.1 seed,” he said.
“Hopefully I can go well in a few more matches but I’ve got to look first at tomorrow because it’s a tough match whoever gets through.”
In other results, second seed Danai Udomchoke also advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-3 7-5 victory over Aussie Sadik Kadir.
He will play the winner of the Marinko Matosevic and Matthew Ebden match, which is due to be played on Thursday afternoon.
