In his first qualifying match in Bogota Columbia, James Ward (Seeded 1) was playing his round 2 match (having earned a bye in round 1 courtsey of his seeding) against Santiago Gonzalez. At an altitude of 8000ft this was going to be a tricky match, with the conditions favouring his opponent.
In what turned out to be a very bizarre match, James got off to a very bad start and only managed to win one game of the first set, losing it 1-6. The second set got off to a much better start for James, he shot out to a 3-0 lead before the rain arrived. After a very brief delay, they restarted and James was soon serving to level the match at 5-1, or would have been, but there was yet another rain delay. This time the delay was for a longer period. On the resumption James served it out to take the set 6-1 and level the match.
In the final and deciding set the match was evenly poised at 1-1, when there was yet another rain delay. This seemed to unsettle James as when they returned to the court he was soon down 2-5 and it looked liked he would be going out. However, he managed to hold serve and then break to get back to 4-5 and then levelled the scoreline again. This sent the match into a final set tiebreak, and James certainly stepped it up at this point and went up 3-0 in the tiebreak in no time at all. With the tiebreak score at 6-3 James was serving for the match and he only needed the one point to close it out and win. This means he is one win away from the main draw in Bogota.
His next match will be against Marcelo Arevelo of El Salvador, this is going to be another tricky match up for James.