Southland No 1 Oliver Cuthill had to battle hard to overcome Shaun Paringitai in the feature singles match in Dunedin premier club tennis on Saturday.
Cuthill (Mornington-Roslyn Blue), a student in Dunedin having returned from a tennis scholarship at the University of New Orleans, looked to have the game to win clearly.
However, Paringitai (Mornington-Roslyn Black), the experienced professional coach, used all his skills to push his younger opponent before going down 5-7, 6-7.
Paringitai is more accustomed to the indoor conditions and perhaps found the wind more of a test but should derive benefit from his first competitive outing for over a year.
The only winner for the Black team was Matt Foo, who fought back from a 1-6 first-set loss to beat Oliver Scott 6-0, 6-2 in the next two.
Adam Williams and Joe Highton won the lower order in straight sets while Cuthill and Scott needed a 10-6 final tiebreak to beat Paringitai and Foo in doubles.
The other tie was a whitewash to Balmacewen which beat a badly depleted Taieri team 6-0.
Conrad Wong, Hee Bum Chung, Matt White and Andrew Hilliard look to be a well balanced team and early favourites for the title.
The women's competition begins in two weeks.
