Tara Moore blows chance to seal victory over Vera Zvonareva

Tara Moore, who had played so nervelessly on Tuesday evening to level her match with 2010 Wimbledon finalist Vera Zvonareva at one-set all before bad light stopped play, blew her chance of a famous victory when play resumed on Wednesday. Twice the Briton served for the match. Twice her nerve deserted her. She played brilliantly for large parts of her 4-6, 7-6, 7-9 defeat but this will hurt.

Moore, Britain’s No5, had only ever won one WTA main tour match. She was ranked 250 in the world but you would never have known it as she took the game to Zvonareva, who has lifted 12 WTA Tour titles and reached two grand slam finals. When played resumed, Moore broke to go 2-0 up and her serve, which had been vulnerable in the opening two sets, looked solid and her groundstrokes devastating as she went 5-3 up.

But serving for the match at 5-4 she was slow to a drop shot and sent her reply long, puffed over a 66mph serve which her Russian opponent smashed away, and another short groundstroke was also punished. Then, having recovered from 0-40 to 30-40, Moore double-faulted.

She showed commendable fight to break again to go 6-5 up, but serving for the match a second time the pattern repeated itself: she went 0-40 down, fought back to 30-40 and double faulted.

The set then went on serve until 8-7. Defending her second matchpoint Moore sent a forehand long to give Zvonareva, who has missed much of the past two years due to a shoulder injury and a virus, a victory in a match that lasted just short of three hours.

“Vera is a very good player and she played well in the tough moments,” said Moore, whose sponsorship deal with the mobile company Three meant they donated £3 to the Rally for Bally, the charity set up in memory of Elena Baltacha, every time she did a fist-pump.

The firm estimated that there were 171 fist pumps during the match and donated £513. “Hopefully Bally would be really proud of me and I tried to fight as hard as she did out there.”