Ireland were subdued by an experienced Spanish team in last night's European men's team championship in Belfast. The ability of the Spanish to operate impressively on the fast indoor surface took the Irish by surprise. Poor first serves were the scourge of Ireland's singles players, John Doran and Scott Barron.
Barron often matched the power of Tomas Carbonell from the baseline, but not his subtlety in other departments and lost the top singles 6-3, 6-3 in just over an hour.
Carbonell has a career best of 28th in the world, but has been inactive since August with a back injury that had to be treated before the match.
Barron was unable to capitalise on a break of serve in the first game of the second set, dropping his first serve in the second and fourth games. John Doran coped well with the wiles of the 33-year-old Spanish team captain Marcas Corriz, but was often his own worst enemy and suffered a frustrating 6-7, 7-5, 6-2 defeat in just over two hours.
Corriz beat top-20 players in his day and said that Doran's standard surprised him. Doran won the tie-break in the first set 7-5 after earlier squandering a set point, and led 4-2 in the second set. He double faulted twice to allow Corriz level the match at 4-4.
Corriz, now more aggressive, broke again in the 12th game to level the match and raced away to a 3-0 lead in a final set.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)