ToC Friday Second-Round Focus: Melissa Alves In 13-11 Thriller Over Hana Moataz  
by Rob Dinerman

Dateline January 21, 2023 --- Trailing 11-10 in the fifth game after losing four consecutive points, Melissa Alves courageously conjured up a pair of nick-finding forehand cross-court winners en route to a three-point surge that gave her an incredibly hard-earned 4-11, 11-6, 8-11, 11-3, 13-11 victory over Hana Moataz Friday night in second-round action at the 2023 Tournament of Champions before a raucous gathering at the New York Athletic Club. Alves’s eleventh-hour heroics capped off an hour-long struggle that featured lengthy all-court points, several reversals in momentum and an effort level on the part of both players, especially in the fifth game, that is unlikely to be equaled in any subsequent match of this year’s tournament.

Moataz, who had erased a two-games-to-love deficit in her opening-round win over Lucy Turmel in this same venue Wednesday evening, charged out of the blocks with aggressive volleying and a barrage of winners throughout the one-sided first game and to a 4-1 advantage in the second. At that juncture Alves, aided by a few early-point Moataz tins (including one on an attempted serve-return drop shot) and some remarkable retrieving, engineered a long sustained run that rescued that second game and got the match back on even footing. Moataz was able to arm-fight her way through the third but lost her focus in the fourth and fell too far behind to mount a comeback. The fifth game --- the only one in which both players were at their peak virtually throughout --- was extremely hard-fought and high-quality, with both players battling for every inch of the court and exchanging thrusts and parries. Moataz caught Alves at 6-all, but then lost two quick points, on a nervy Alves forehand serve-return drop-shot that appeared to catch Moataz by surprise, followed by a stroke call on a wayward Moataz forehand drive. Alves carried this small advantage to 10-7, triple-match-ball, only to have Moataz hit a trio of winners, a shallow forehand cross-court, an out-of-the-blue backhand working-boast from mid-court that Alves never saw, followed by a delicate forehand straight-drop after a long point at the end of which Alves was stuck in the back-left.

By this 10-all juncture, the crowd was in a frenzy, particularly a large cheering section of recent Harvard alumni in support of Moataz, who had captained the Crimson to a seventh consecutive national team championship just 11 months earlier. Moataz got to match ball on a stroke call against Alves, who, however, earned a fourth match ball of her own with those two consecutive forehand lasers. At the end of the final point, a torturous and lengthy exchange during which each player had multiple near-winners thwarted by some desperation retrievals, Moataz, alone near the front wall with an open ball to work with, tried a look-away backhand cross-drop that looked like it would have been a winner had it not clanged the tin. Both players had played their hearts out, and they received a fully deserved prolonged applause as they exited the court.

There was one other women’s match that ended with a two-point fifth-game margin, which happened earlier in the day on the all-glass exhibition court in Grand Central Station. Gina Kennedy, Moataz’s Harvard teammate a few years ago --- the two had opposed each other in the 2020 Individuals final, with Kennedy winning her third Individuals title in her four-year college career --- who had missed several late-autumn tournaments due to illness before making a triumphant-return run to the winner’s circle at the Weymuller tournament in Brooklyn Heights just prior to the ToC, survived a last-minute rally (from 6-10 to 9-10) by Tinne Gilis. Like the Alves-Moataz match, this one also ended on a tinned backhand cross-drop, although in this case it was on a volley rather than off the ground. There were three other women’s round-of-32 five-game matches as well, and even the top-seeded Nouran Gohar was forced to a fourth game by Olivia Fiechter in what to this point has been a very competitive women’s tournament.