Bermudians took the centre stage in the third- and fourth-round matches of the BLTC Invitational Tennis Tournament at Coral Beach yesterday ? although the most intriguing contest of the day featured two Americans.

Everyone was anticipating an all-out battle when the second-seeded George Lynch took on the fiercely competitive Craig Brand, but that never materialised.

Lynch, from Vermont and playing with pinpoint accuracy, took less than an hour to beat his Pennsylvanian opponent 6-1, 6-2.

Brand never appeared to settle into any sort of rhythm early in the match and his fight disappeared appeared soon after as he lost 12 out of 15 games.

But if this highly-anticipated contest was somewhat of a letdown, the Bermudians made up for it.

Unseeded Eugene Simmons came within a whisker of upsetting the highly-favoured second seed Earl Leader when he took the first set and was up two games to nil and 30-love in the second before Leader was even able to catch his breath.

But Simmons somehow took his foot off the pedal and Leader was allowed to start his comeback. When it was all over Leader had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in a 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 win.

?I let him get away,? lamented Simmons when it was all over.

Meanwhile Leader still wasn?t sure that he had actually pulled it off.

?I really thought that I was out of the tournament when Gene broke me in the second game and was up 30-love in the third,? he said.

?I knew that if I lost that game it was all over, so I had to go for broke.?

That proved a disaster for Simmons because he only won one of the next 13 games.

?I don?t know what happened,? he said.

?I just started to play too defensively and let him attack. That was a mistake. Once he got on top there was nothing that I could do and for each point he got my game fell apart even more.?

While Leader was taking the measure of Simmons on the centre courts, Robin Blackburne was playing the ?match of his life? on court six when he and partner Peter Buffum beat Joe Dippell and Don Thompson in a three-set marathon 7-5, 4-6, 6-4.

?I have been playing tennis for more than 50 years,? exclaimed Lightbourne, ?and this was my greatest victory.?

In a couple of other long-lasting matches, the pair of Ann O?Brien and Elizabeth Pearce Batten proved to be a ?hot? combination. First the pair came from a set down to beat Kim Burns and Helen Parfitt in a two-hour duel 1-6, 6-3, 6-3 and then came back later to take the measure of Henrietta Gates and Merrilyn Gerrish in another three-set marathon ? this time prevailing 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 in the Ladies 50 division.

Other exciting matches saw Sarah Gook and Jo Tucker come from a set down to beat the American/Canadian pair of Ann Manning and Linda Suderman 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4, but Manning and Suderman gained a revenge of sorts when they got the measure of Ann Brown and Sally Hurlbut in the Ladies 50s doubles, winning easily 6-0, 6-2.