JAMIE Baker shrugged off his defeat by Samuel Groth at the Slazenger Open in Nottingham yesterday – admitting he was glad just to be on the court.
The 7-6 (9-7), 6-3 loss was a significant achievement considering that just three months ago the 21-year-old was lying in intensive care in Florida suffering from a potentially life-threatening virus.
Scotland's Baker was enjoying the best period
of his career, having won two Futures tournaments on the back of qualifying for the Australian Open and winning his first Davis Cup match.
But his rise up the rankings came to a shuddering halt when he was diagnosed with Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura.
He returned to training three weeks ago and, well ahead of schedule, accepted wild cards for Nottingham and Wimbledon next week.
"If you'd asked me when I was lying in a hospital bed if I'd be playing here I'd have laughed, so just to be playing is a massive bonus," said Baker.
"I was very, very tired and for weeks after I came out of hospital I felt like I couldn't get out of bed. I wasn't able to look more than a week in advance.
"Once the disappointment goes away I think I'll realise how close I was to winning the match and that's a massive thing. I felt really good but there's no question that was a rude awakening playing on grass and against somebody with as big a serve as that. I expected my sharpness to be the last thing to come back."
The eighth point of the first-set tie-break was the turning point in the match, as the British No 3, serving at 5-2, thought he had played a winning shot but Groth somehow dug out a lob that landed on the sideline.
The powerful Australian qualifier went on to take the breaker on his first set point and a break in the sixth game of the second set earned him victory.
Drama followed later when the Russian Dmitry Tursunov, sixth seed in the singles, was thrown out of the tournament after storming off court during his doubles match.
The 25-year-old, who was partnering Chris Haggard, walked off with the pair trailing Simone Bolelli and Andreas Seppi 6-4, 3-1 after disagreeing with a line call.
The Italian pair were awarded victory and the Association of Tennis Professionals later confirmed that Tursunov
would be withdrawn from the singles. Thomas Johansson now advances to the quarter-finals.
Britain was guaranteed a representative in the second round when Alex Bogdanovic faced James Ward, and it was Bogdanovic who triumphed, seeing off Ward 6-3, 6-4 to set up a meeting with Croatian Marin Cilic.
Bogdanovic was on the verge of breaking into the top 100 last summer before a back injury hampered his progress, but he has struggled to reverse his slide down the rankings and is currently outside the top 250.
Bogdanovic will have to play an even better match if he is to beat Cilic, who knocked out second seed Paul-Henri Mathieu. "He's a good player, a young guy coming up, and it's going to be tough," he said. "But I've got nothing to lose and I'll go out and try to play aggressive."
Top seed Radek Stepanek beat John Isner of the United States 6-3, 6-2 to advance to the second round. The 15th-ranked Czech next plays qualifier Vincent Spadea of the United States, who beat wildcard Alexander Slabinsky of Britain 6-1, 7-5.
In the doubles, Jamie Murray overcame a stern challenge from his former partner to reach the second round. Murray, playing with South African Jeff Coetzee while regular partner Max Mirnyi attempts to qualify for Wimbledon, could easily have joined Baker in making an early exit.
Facing former partner Eric Butorac and his fellow American Bobby Reynolds, the pair eventually progressed on a match tie-break, winning 7-6 (8-6), 4-6, 10-8.
In a tight first set, Murray and Coetzee squandered two set points at 6-4 in the tie-break before taking it 8-6. The Americans hit back in the second set to level and looked poised for victory at 4-1 in the deciding set. But Murray and Coetzee pulled level at 6-6 and clinched victory when Reynolds double-faulted.
