Chris O\u2019Connell has survived a blistering start from fellow New South Welshman Blake Mott to take the Cairns Tennis International title on Sunday.<\/p>\n
After dropping the opening set without winning a game, the third seed righted the ship to eventually claim victory 0-6 6-2 6-4 in just under two hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlake came out all guns blazing and I really didn\u2019t know what hit me,\u201d O\u2019Connell, a previous Cairns semifinalist, said. \u201cEverything was going a million miles an hour and before I knew it, the first set was over.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really had to regroup and think about what I needed to change up, but I seemed to turn it around quite quickly,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was quite a strange match, very up and down, but I thought I had the better of the second set and then the third set was anyone\u2019s game again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was lucky enough to get through it in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pair last met in a February Pro Tour final in Port Pirie, with O\u2019Connell also taking the honours then in three tight sets. Mott had just enjoyed a break-out ATP Challenger win in Launceston, but since then O\u2019Connell has had some success of his own, reaching a semifinal at the same level in Sibiu, Romania, just last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really found some form towards the end of my Europe trip,\u201d he said. \u201cI got my ranking up high enough to start having a go in the Challengers and did well there. I was feeling really good after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connell, 22, only arrived back last week, bringing home with him a place in the world\u2019s top 300 and some newfound confidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel a lot more comfortable in tighter situations and I\u2019m able to play at a consistent high level more often now,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m really looking forward to the two Challengers in Traralgon and Canberra and the run of tournaments in January, especially the Australian Open,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Live scores of all Australian Pro Tour events are available through www.tennis.com.au\/protour\/scores and for a live stream of selected events visit www.tennis.com.au\/protour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chris O\u2019Connell has survived a blistering start from fellow New South Welshman Blake Mott to take the Cairns Tennis International title on Sunday. After dropping the opening set without winning a game, the third seed righted the ship to eventually claim victory 0-6 6-2 6-4 in just under two hours. \u201cBlake came out all guns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5788,"featured_media":12180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}