Guyana’s number one seed and defending champion, Philip Squires, lost in straight sets to Jeremy Miller in the men’s singles finals of the Pegasus Open lawn tennis tournament that was played last night at the courts of the Pegasus Hotel.
Miller cut down Squires’s five-year hold on the title with a hard-fought 6 – 3, 7 – 5 win over Squires. Miller captured an easy first set, but came up against aggressive play from Squires in the second set.
At one point, Squires looked set to clinch the second set when perched
at 5 – 2 before Miller picked up five straight games to seal the deal and capture his first ever Pegasus Open title.
When Stabroek Sport caught up with an ecstatic Miller shortly after his win, the number two seed was basking in his newest achievement.
“I feel great, I feel ecstatic it’s a bit of a mixed feeling. As always I came in with the idea to win, with a plan to do my best and hope that the end result would be in my favor and in the end it was so and I’m just pretty happy about that,” Miller said.
Miller relayed that it was when he began to slip in the second set that he decided that he had to push himself, and play fiercely to try to end the game in his favour.
“It was when I was down 2 – 5 I told myself that the next three games were do or die and I had to push myself to get to 5 – 5 even, but even then I still had to keep the intensity up because at any point he [Squires] could have pushed it to a tie break,” Miller said.
Meanwhile, Squires said that he doesn’t feel too down about his loss, it’s just a simple case of the better man winning.
“I feel normal because I know about losing that’s how tennis goes. I haven’t been practising for some while now and I wasn’t that fit and up to it. I tried to give it my all but it just didn’t come out.” Squires said.
“I wasn’t focusing because my mind just wasn’t in the game and I made too many unforced errors. Miller played well and he was waiting on me to make unforced errors. So I just have to say congratulations to him,” he said.
Weather permitting, the tournament is expected to continue tonight with the women’s singles final where defending champion Carol Humphrey will take on Krystal Sukra.
