Liverpool International Tennis 2008: Harkleroad ends Murphy challenge

Jun 12 2008 by Ian Hargraves, Liverpool Daily Post

LIVERPOOL’S star tennis prospect Chloe Murphy put up an outstanding performance in the first set of her match at Calderstones against America’s Ashley Harkleroad yesterday, before fading away in the second set and going down 6-3 6-1.

In that fine first set there appeared to be very little between the players, and with a section of the crowd right behind her, Chloe looked to have a very good chance of taking the lead.

Sadly, she faltered at 3-3, and after losing her serve, never had much chance of winning, despite contesting every game quite closely.

Ashley is, of course, the reigning Calderstones champion, but she was happy to pay tribute to her opponent, who played some excellent tennis and hit two or three magnificent winners.

It has already become quite clear that she has developed a fine all-round game, and just needs a combination of experience and match play cunning, if she is to achieve what all Liverpudlians genuinely hope and expect.

In the other morning match, qualifying winner Seb Jackson also put up a good fight against classy American Robert Kendrick, before going down 6-4 6-4 in a most entertaining contest.

Although slightly older than one might expect, he looked in pretty good form, and gave a most impressive performance, just failing to hold his own in two or three key points.

As expected, Caroline Wozniacki was a bit too good for Michelle Larcher de Brito from Portugal, and reminded us all just how well she is developing.

The afternoon was inevitably dominated by veteran ‘name’ players with Goran Ivanesevic and Ilie Nastase giving a most colourful display to defeat Mansour Bahrami and Peter McNamara, and former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash showing plenty of his famous power to beat Sweden’s Mikael Pernford.

The most interesting match, between 15-year-old Australian star Bernard Tomic and Liverpool’s own Ken Skupski was held back until quite late in the evening.

In the end, Liverpool’s Skupski gained an extremely valuable victory over Australia’s talented Tomic, who recently hit the headlines by winning his country’s Under-18 title with a year or two in hand.

It was an excellent performance as Tomic is widely regarded as a genuine star of the future, and was expected by at least some critics to defeat Skupski.

All in all, it was another highly entertaining day, with less blazing sun but plenty of all-round entertainment on court.