With nothing to separate them over the first four days of the 2016 season, the Orange County Breakers and San Diego Aviators each depart their head-to-head series at 2-2 overall. The Breakers claimed a 21-19 victory on Wednesday night in the last of four consecutive matches between the California-based Mylan World TeamTennis clubs to start the year.
After the first three games of men’s doubles went with serve, the Raven Klaasen delivery proved vulnerable, and the Breakers exploited the weakness with some cracking returns for the break to the tune of a 3-1 lead. In the next game, the Aviators took both their allotted GEICO timeouts and held a 3-1 lead on return to get the break back, but a trio of big serves from Dennis Novikov bailed the Breakers out of trouble and got them the 4-1 lead. That proved to be the key moment of the set, as the Breakers closed out the opening set two games later to lead 5-2.
Up next in women’s singles, Shelby Rogers played from behind for the duration of the match, as she and Nicole Gibbs traded big serves and solid baseline play from the back of the court. Her fighting qualities were on full display, however, in the tiebreak as she rallied from 0-3 and 2-4 down in the nine-point tiebreak to take the set and put the first set on the board for the Aviators. The win for Rogers marked the first time in the four-match series that one side didn’t pocket both of the first two sets, with the Breakers having done so on Sunday and Monday and the Aviators achieving the feat on Tuesday.
In contrasting fashion to Rogers before him, Harrison broke to begin the set against Novikov and kept his advantage for first ball to last. Striking six aces, Harrison dropped just three points total on his serve to take the set by a 5-3 margin and level the match at 12-12 headed to halftime.
In the penultimate event of the night, Scott Lipsky and Alla Kudryavtseva put the Breakers ahead early in mixed doubles, claiming an early break of the Darija Jurak serve on a double fault and then holding Kudryavtseva’s game from 1-2 down to lead 3-1. However, it was the Aviator pairing who finished the stronger of the two, breaking serve in the 4-3 game to send it to a tiebreak and claiming five straight points to steal the set and move in front 17-16.