Schools Real Tennis Doubles Championships 2019
Finals
Senior A Final (Queen's Club)
Radley beat Wellington 6/3 6/1
Senior B Final (Queen's Club)
St Pauls beat Seaford 6/1
Under 16 Final (Radley)
Radley 1 beat Hayling 8/7
Under 13 Final (Oratory)
Westbourne beat Christchurch 8/6
Reports
Seniors (U18) at Queens Club
A Grade
Radley 1 (Ned Batstone & Harry Purton) bt Wellington 1 (Freddie Bristowe & Jack Kinnear) 6/3 6/1
The qualifying group was fiercely contested, with 6 of the ten matches reaching 4/6 or 5/6. All teams bar one managed at least one win. The Eton pair, Louis Manson & Ben Smith, with much less experience but bags of talent from the lawn tennis and rackets courts, proved surprisingly successful, only losing one match (to Radley 2) and that from 5/3 up. Their tactic of rushing the net met with varying success, but will no doubt be refined in future – and certainly produced a succession of spectacular volleys.
Canford 1 were a little unlucky with only one win, but two 6/5 defeats which, on another day might have seen them qualify. Canford 2 battled manfully, but found themselves slightly outgunned while Wellington 2 found two wins and nearly a third, losing only 4/6 to Eton.
Radley 2 won all four sets, but two from well down (1/5 to Canford 1 and 3/5 to Eton). Good serving from Max Wetton and sensible retrieval from Oscar White seemed to be decisive.
In the semi-finals, Eton were dispatched 6/1 by Radley 1, while Radley 2 gave a good account of themselves in a 3/6 loss to Wellington 1.
The final pitted the World Junior champion (Freddie Bristowe of Wellington) against his close rival (Ned Batstone of Radley) whom he had only just beaten in 3 close sets in the Seacourt Silver racket quarter-final the previous day. The decisive factor was that Ned’s partner, Harry Purton, was very close behind these two in standard while Bristowe’s partner for Wellington (Jack Kinnear) was far less experienced – manfully though he battled in this exalted company.
Wellington fought hard to stay with Radley up to 3-4 in the first set before Freddie’s efforts at Seacourt caught up with him and Radley raced away with 8 of the last 9 games.
B Grade
St Pauls (Rossiter & Livesey) bt Seaford (James & Sunderland) 6/3
Two seriously competitive qualifying groups were played before the semi-finals. Canford 3 won the first group, just pipping Wycombe Abbey/Wellington (a girls pair of Isolde Taylor and Daisy Bristowe) 6/5 who then claimed second place.
St Pauls won the other group with close matches throughout against Wellington 3, Seaford and Oratory. Seaford came second.
In the play-offs, Wellington 3 beat MCS and Oratory beat Radley 3 (for 5th place). Seaford beat Canford 3 in a close 6/3 in the first semi-final while St Pauls put an end to the girls exploits, before beating Seaford (last years champions) 6/1 in a very solid performance from two young rackets players.
U16 at Radley
Radley 1 (Ed Alder & Magnus Garson) bt Hayling (James Medlow & Max Jones) 8/7
U13 at Oratory
Once again, the standard of play was fantastic and I cannot praise them enough for they sportsmanship and competitiveness.
The supporters were on the edge of their seats for most of the day. Possibly due to the cold and snow but mainly for the standard of play.
Six teams participated this year. Westbourne House came in force with three teams. The format was a round robin one culminating with the top 2 teams in the final. We had all standards on court going from the very experienced to the fun loving participators. Many matches were close but sometimes the final result did not reflect the match seen from the spectator’s gallery.
With 4 matches won by three teams, we had to use a count back to separate them. Magdalen lost out by one game. The final was between ChristChurch and Westbourne House 1. In a reversal of a previous match played during the day Westbourne House 1 managed to win 8/6 against ChristChuch.
Congratulations to all the players for entering and for giving us a glorious day of Tennis.
Thank you to the Oratory School for Hosting this fabulous event , the spectators for giving up their whole day to watch and not forgetting Mick Dean for the tournament coordination.
Last but not least, The T&RA for supporting the next generation of players.
