Sydenham Tennis Club (Squash & Tennis)
Lawrie Park Road • Sydenham, London • SE26 6ET
Tel: 020 8778 4217
The finals of the racketball tournament produced very exciting and closely contested matches. Congratulations to all the players who reached this stage of the competition and especially to the medal winners and thanks to those quarter final losers who stayed on to watch and mark the later rounds.
The first set of quarter- finals saw Ian Moody, seeded 1, against Chris Hayes seeded 8, and John Rowe, seeded 2, against James Siu seeded 7. Both Chris and James are relative newcomers to racketball and, although both showed considerable promise, skill and persistence, the two top seeds came through fairly comfortably.
In the second set of quarter - finals Sean Baron seeded 4 was up against Bradley Sawyer, seeded 5 – the oldest finalist up against the youngest. In the first game Sean’s cunning and experience just allowed him reach 14 all, before losing 16 17 but Bradley romped home in the second game 15 4. In the other match Paul Lindsay, seeded 3, met Jon Miles, seeded 6, a repeat of their match at this stage last year. Just as last year, Jon won the first game, this time by 15 12 but Paul seemed set to overturn this by building up a good lead in the second game, only to see Jon storming back, not quite enough to win but enough to take the game to 16 17, just enough to prevent Paul from pulling back his three point deficit in the first game. So a win to Jon on aggregate.
In the semi - finals, Ian met Bradley and won the first game by the apparently comfortable score of 15 7 – but the score does not reflect the time and effort he needed to put in to win his points as Bradley chased down ball after ball, only being let down by an occasional unforced (or perhaps one should say semi unforced), error. In the second game, there was no let up as Bradley continued his pursuit of every ball and cut his error rate so Ian’s victory at 15 13 was hard work. Meanwhile, in the other semi - final, John put away Jon rather more easily, winning 15 8 and 15 9.
The finals, unlike the quarter and semi - finals, were played “best of 3”. In the bronze final Bradley, who seemed to have learned from, but not become tired by, the two hard rounds he had already played, totally frustrated Jon by chasing down every possible and some impossible balls and avoiding any unnecessary errors and won 15 5 and 15 7.
Ian met John in the grand final. After winning the first game at 15 11, Ian built up a big lead in the second game and seemed to be on course to repeat his match victory of last year but then he eased up or ran into the marathon runners’ wall and John got back into the game and won it 17 15. In the decider, John amassed 14 points whilst Ian only collecting 4 and, although he staged a mini revival by winning the next 4 points, John picked up the last point he needed to win 15 8.
In short, Gold to John, seeded 2; Silver to Ian, seeded 1; and Bronze to Bradley, seeded 5 – a contrast to last year where the results exactly matched the seedings.
David Roberts
03/04/2017
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