Tennis: Statham through to second round

Rubin Statham has advanced to the second round of the Heineken Open. Photo / NZPA

Rubin Statham has just missed out on a chance to play in his first grand slam tennis tournament - and he's extremely happy.

The New Zealand No 2 was due to head to Melbourne tomorrow for the Australian Open qualifying rounds, which start on Wednesday.

But he will be cancelling his flight because he's won through to the second round of the Heineken Open in Auckland, beating out-of-sorts fellow New Zealander Dan King-Turner 6-2 7-5 in their first round clash today.

"I asked to play my doubles match today as well because the Australian Open qualifiers are on Wednesday and if I lost both I would have had a day off to fly to Australia," he said.

"But I can't play there now."

Instead Statham gets US$7500 ($10,139) for his efforts and 20 ATP ranking points, which will propel him from his current ranking of 332 to inside the top 300.

He can increase that to US$12,550 and 45 ranking points if he can win his second round match, where he will face eighth seed Albert Montanes or 21-year-old Australian qualifier James Lemke.

Lemke's ranking of 456 is well below Statham's, while Montanes has won just once in the four years he has been to Auckland - a 6-4 6-4 win against Statham in 2008.

"I lost in two sets and I didn't go into it in my best shape," he said.

"Montanes plays a similar type of style to me, just better. If I face him I'm just going to have to play the way I play but just step it up."

The two New Zealanders were both given wild cards into the tournament, which in the last few years has been the only ATP tournament they have played in, so the chance to play each other in a competition where the all the direct entrants were ranked in the top 64 presented a rare opportunity.

Eventually Statham's mental toughness triumphed over King-Turner, who found it very hard to get his game together.

King-Turner won the first two games but lost the next six. A low first serve percentage of 52 per cent played into Statham's hands and King-Turner often chose the wrong time to come into the net, where Statham picked him off regularly.

King-Turner also broke early in the second set and with his first serve percentage up to 71 per cent, he was able to serve for the set in the 10th game.

But King-Turner could only win three points in his next two service games - two of them aces - and the match finished when he hit a forehand into the net.

Statham said he returned serve well and he knew King-Turner would be coming to the net often.

"Dan has an all-court game so I was expecting that. I had the opportunity to pass him or lob and I did that pretty well."

King-Turner said it was tough to put into words how disappointed he was.

"I was practising well and I was going into the match pretty confident," he said.

"My serve wasn't going well in the first set, and when I got into position to win the second set my baseline game let me down.

"I will have to take a step back when I am not so frustrated and think about what happened."

King-Turner said playing against Statham, who he practices with and whose game he knows well, in front of their home crowd was difficult but no excuse.

"He had the same thing, and he dealt with it better than me."

King-Turner, ranked 263, will now head to the Australian Open qualifiers.

* In a later first round singles match on Centre Court, Thomaz Bellucci of Brazil beat Marco Chudinelli of Switzerland, 6-3 6-3.

- NZPA