BY EDWARD de la FUENTE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Tim Mayotte won Friday's only singles match.
(Michael Snyder photo)
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MASON -- In a match as even as the score would indicate, the doubles team of Dick Stockton and Marty Riessen evened its record in the Great American Insurance Seniors Championship Friday night.
After losing its first match to Brian Gottfried and Jaime Fillol, 7-6 (7-3), Stockton-Riessen needed the tiebreaker again, but this time to defeat Ross Case-Owen Davidson, 7-6 (9-7), at the ATP Tennis Center.
"We both had chances," said Riessen, 57. "They had the early break, we were able to come back. It was pretty even, but then again, all of the matches have been that way."
Indeed, evenness was the theme of the evening, with two matches going to a tiebreaker and another ending in a 7-5 result.
Stockton-Riessen prevailed despite being victimized by the shot of the day from Case, who shorthopped a return shot and hit it by Stockton to even the tiebreaker at 6-6.
But the match ended with two aces, one each for Stockton and Riessen, and a double-fault by Davidson.
Riessen, last year's doubles champion with Vijay Amritraj as well as the doubles winner in 1995 with Raul Ramirez, won't be moving on to today's final with Stockton this time around.
Only the top two doubles teams move on after round-robin play Thursday and Friday, and at 1-1 in matches won and lost, Stockton-Riessen had not won enough overall games to advance.
The team of Tim Mayotte and Fred Stolle emerged as the only unbeaten duo in the field, advancing to the final by beating Brian Gottfried-Jaime Fillol, 7-6 (7-4).
In the day's lone singles match, it was only fitting Tim Mayotte used an ace to close out Harold Solomon.
For most of the match, Mayotte's serve determined the fortunes of both players.
His first three serves were aces, causing Solomon to hand his racket to a ball boy and encourage him to face Mayotte for a point. Once Mayotte had closed out the match, 7-5, he had collected six aces, but three double-faults as well.
"He has such a heavy serve," Mayotte's doubles partner in the tournament, Fred Stolle, said, "that I don't have to do much."
With the win, Mayotte moves on to today's singles final against Gullikson, who won his semifinal match over Gottfried Thursday.
Solomon, though, held serve through the first six games as well, keeping the match tied at 4-3.
Then, Solomon broke Mayotte's serve convincingly, at one point shooting his return past a flailing Mayotte.
But Mayotte broke back to pull within 5-4 and then, two games later, broke Solomon again to put himself in position for the victory.
Today's matches begin at 7 p.m., beginning with the singles final between Mayotte and Gullikson.
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