09/10 Closed Tournament

North Middlesex TTL Closed Tournament - Played at Ellenborough TTC on 15th to 19th February 2010

The management committee of the League believed that they could hardly advertise the competition better than by including a copy of the Entry Form in the Handbook, which every League player received last September. In the event only a few days before the advertised closing date for entries, only 3 or 4 had been received and we were seriously considering cancelling this season’s event. Thankfully, a slight flow of forms started to arrive and entries were obtained by direct pressure being placed on players who were personally contacted in the flesh, by phone or by E-mail. Eventually, enough entries were collected to enable 10 of the normal 16 events to be staged. A few more people were recruited during the competition itself (a procedure which is totally against all principles of tournament management) and the final tally of entries was 45, which is about 50% of the normal total. This matter will have to be debated at the AGM to establish either a new system or a complete change in the way in which we run our annual tournament. Meanwhile, any suggestions from any League member will be carefully considered.

Monday night saw the Hard Bat Singles start things off and this saw the two usual exponents of the strange art (it is quite a different game) namely Clifford Grant and Gary List grind their way to the Final which, predictably went to Gary over five ends. Unfortunately, hard bat supremo, Derek Balding, had not entered!

We then went on to the Handicap Singles, which actually had 18 entries. I must say that the gulf between the standard of Premier Division and Division 4 players is such that it really is a waste of time for the former to enter. By adopting the old 21 up, best of 3, system it is just workable but the actual handicapping of the Division 4 players just has to be +17 points with the Premier player at scratch and I really would recommend the Premier boys to limit their involvement to the Open Singles and Veterans event (for which most of them appear to qualify!). The Final was due to be a +17 points vrs +10 points contest between Brian Johnson (Bounds Green) and Simon Jameson (Capitol) but regrettably the latter, following an altercation with his opponent in the Division 3/4 Singles, chose to give a walkover to his opponent.

That Division 3/4 Singles event had actually been concluded earlier, and there were some pretty decent contests along the way, as you would expect given the fairly even standard of the players, although only the Final went to five games. This was between the vastly experienced Simon Jameson (Capitol) and Daniel Wright (Ellenborough) who will not be 13 until the Tuesday after the end of the Tournament! Unfortunately this was the match in which the altercation occurred, for which both players appear to have been culpable to some extent. Simon led by two games to nil and game 3 stood at 10-9 to Daniel. At this point something happened which annoyed Simon and he lost the game point. Thereafter, he could not regain his grip on the match and went down 3-2.

On Tuesday, the Open Singles was played with 28 entries. The first match of all was between the jovial Ritesh Shah and young Craig Thompson (both Ellenborough), which ended by the fifth game being won 11-9 by Ritesh. There followed two more 5 game thrillers in one which Terry Wilson (Ellenborough) beat Andy Cheal (Mayfield) and in the other Cliff Oliver (Woodside Park) beat Lech Bogdanowicz (Ellenborough).

In round 2, Luke Walsh (aged 13, son of Jimmy) played a tremendous game against Daniel Bronziet (Edmonton) before going down 11-6 in the fifth. Jimmy Walsh himself ploughed through all opposition quite comfortably, not losing a game, and eliminating Connor Neenan (Ellenborough) in the quarter-final. His semi-final victim was Robin Ashleigh (Edmonton). Meanwhile, Bradley Tuttle (Ellenborough) had got through tough matches against Lukaz Janisiewicz (also Ellenborough) and Stuart Shepherd (Woodside Park) in five games before beating Daniel Bronziet 11-9, 11-7, 9-11,

11-5 in the semi-final. The final was won convincingly by Jimmy 11-8,11-9, 11-5. On the same Tuesday night the Veterans Doubles was staged in a Round Robin form, as only 4 pairs had entered and Stuart Shepherd/Cliff Grant ended up as the winners.

On Day 3 we played all of the Junior events and the remainder of the Veterans’ contests. The Under 18 event saw the favourites reach the Final, as you might have expected, but the result was not. Connor Neenan, who is ranked No. 57 junior boy in England, met Bradley Tuttle, who is at No. 80. This was a fantastic match and was a credit to both boys. Almost inevitably it went to five ends but the fifth game ended in astonishing style. From 9-all, Bradley gained a match point and proceeded to finish things off with a huge topspin kill. This led to a series of amazing returns from Connor, who had been driven back away from the table and Bradley had to leap in the air to play his next shot. However, he continued to land his big attempted kills on the other side until eventually he succeeded in smashing a diagonal kill across the table which was impossible to return. So this was a great win for Bradley, a superb performance by Connor, and undoubtedly the best game of the whole week.

The Under 15 event again saw Connor in the Final, this time against the rapidly improving Vincent Stacey but Connor carried too many guns for young Vincent and won 11-4, 11-2, 11-2. All credit, however, to Vincent from whom we can look forward to great things in the future.

As I have said, we then played the Veterans’ two singles events. In the Over 40 set of matches only two went the distance. Semi Idowu beat his Ellenborough club mate Russell Stone 11-6 in the fifth game of their quarter-final before going down in straight sets to Cliff Grant in the semi-final. Meanwhile, Derek Balding had similarly beaten his Edmonton colleague Alan Pearse by 11-7 in the fifth end of their semi-final. The Final between Derek and Cliff went to Derek by 11-6.11-5, 13-15, 11-5.

The last event staged on this evening was the Senior (over 60) Veterans Singles in Round Robin form and was won by Stan Smith, who edged out his Ellenborough colleague Terry Wilson.

We were fortunate to be able to recruit 8 pairs of players to contest the Open Doubles on Day 4, the last day of play in this year’s Competition. Two groups of 4 were played, with the winners and runners-up going forward to semi-finals. So this saw the rejuvenated Graham Sandley partnering Connor Neenan against Jimmy Walsh and his son Luke in a good Final which Graham and Connor won 9,10, and 6.

Alan Shepherd