TENNIS IRISH OPENCONOR NILAND'S inability to deal adequately with the serving bombardment unleashed by Alex Slabinsky proved his undoing in the Shelbourne ATP Irish Open Challenger yesterday.
Niland entered the Fitzwilliam tournament on the back of his title success last Saturday at the ITF Futures tournament in Limerick, but last night he was consistently struggling against the awesome power and radar-like accuracy of the deliveries from the 22-year-old British player.
To add to Niland's problems, Slabinsky maintained a very high first-serve percentage throughout the contest, with the result that the Irish player found it extremely difficult to find a rhythm by getting into a rally.
Compounding the situation, Niland was not nearly as comfortable on his own serve as the London-based right-hander, and one break by Slabinsky in the first set and two breaks to one in the second proved enough for the visiting player to triumph on a 6-4, 6-4 scoreline.
To be fair to Niland, however, he was not at his best physically or in terms of tennis sharpness, as he suffered a bout of food poisoning in the aftermath of his Limerick triumph.
"I could hardly get out of bed on Sunday, but I felt a bit better on Monday, and so decided to go ahead with playing the match," the Limerick native explained.
"He served well and kept up a good first-serve percentage, and some of the time I was struggling to get a racquet on his serve."
With Niland holding a ranking of 304 and Slabinsky, who moved from the Ukraine with his family to London when he was 10, on 333, the Irishman knew he was going to face a severe examination.
Before last night, the two players had beaten each other once, and Slabinsky had underlined his recent considerable improvement by taking the scalp of Belgium's 105-ranked Giles Muller in the qualifying round at the Queen's Club in London.
"I've been working on my serve a lot in the past few weeks, and that paid off tonight," said a delighted Slabinsky.
Earlier, Tristan Farron-Mahon played the game of his life, but agonisingly came up short in his contest against the number four seed, Kristan Pless, from Denmark.
With a world ranking of 1484, Farron-Mahon looked a no-hoper against an opponent who was the top under-18 player in the world in 1999 and has been placed as high as 65 in the world rankings.
But what a fright the Odense native received, as he was forced to go to a third set tie-break before eventually managing to shake off the gritty challenge of the 21-year-old Dubliner on a 7-6 (7/3), 3-6, 7/6 (7/2) scoreline.
