British Under 18 Handicap Singles 2016
Once again Seacourt hosted the National U18 Handicap Singles Competition over the weekend of 17th/18th December. A record total of 30 juniors entered from many different clubs across the country. This included 11 entries from Wellington, an amazing achievement for a club that has only been in existence for a few months.
The “B” competition took place on the Saturday for entries with higher handicaps. For the first time ever there were more girls than boys in this event which augurs well for the future of ladies tennis. Some great play resulted in an all-girl final between Marina Eastwood (Wellington) and Jess Medlow (Seacourt). In a very good match between 2 very promising youngsters, Jess came out on top 6/1 making the most of her home court advantage and tremendous speed around the court.
Sunday saw the “A” event played for those entries with lower handicaps, producing some outstanding tennis with many close matches as you would expect in a handicap event. In the first semi-final Elliot Cotton (Seacourt) had a very narrow victory over Monty Dix (Petworth). This really could have gone either way with Elliot winning 6/5 to take his place in the final. The second semi was between Hugo Pennant (Wellington) & Freddie Bristowe (Wellington). Freddie who recently won the Jim Dear Cup in Rackets had to give a huge handicap to his opponent but still put up a great fight. Hugo eventually going through to the final with a 6/4 win.
The final was extremely close at the start with the first 8 games being equally shared. However from this point onwards Elliot managed to get on top and powered his way through to take the National title 8/4.
Our thanks go out to the T&R.A and to The Dedanists’ Foundation (www.dedanistsfoundation.org) who were sponsoring this event for the first time as part of the valuable work they do to promote junior tennis in the UK.
Paul Weaver
Director of Junior Tennis UK