Round one of the singles competition was finally completed at 1:15 p.m., and two more seeds fell during the round. Nicole Pontee of Vassar College came from behind to defeat #8-seed Becky Morse-Karzen of the University of Mary Washington 4-6, 6-2, 6-4. Meghan McCooey of Tufts University displayed her mental toughness after dropping the first set 6-1 to #2-seed Katie Tabb, before coming back to win the second set 7-5 and the third set 6-2.
However, the match of the day may have been between Jessica Ruth of UC-Santa Cruz and Vindya Dayananda of Chicago, which lasted 2 hours 42 minutes. Dayananda quickly finished the first set 6-0 in thirty minutes. Ruth responded by taking a 2-0 lead in the second set. Momentum then shifted in favor of Dayananda as she won five of the next six games to take a 5-3. Ruth rallied back to win four straight games to stay in the match, winning the hour long second set 7-5.
The third set featured a series of service breaks as the match got tighter until Dayananda held a 5-4 advantage and served for the set. Ruth broke back, won the next two games for the 6-5 lead, and had the match on her racquet. But, Dayananda fought to win the next service game to send the match into a third-set tiebreak. After being down 5-0 in the tiebreak, Dayananda did not give up as she won the next seven points for the third set and the match.
If the second round plays out like the first, we can look forward to some exciting matches this afternoon.