* Over 70 Amateur Singles and Doubles Championships 2025

A great entry of 10 singles players and eight doubles pairs, where Queens, MCC, Seacourt, Oxford, RTC, Petworth and Moreton Morrell were all represented...

Play started on Friday morning with Julian Wilkinson & Marek Stefanowicz kicking off the tournament, Julian dominated this match and progressed the next round with an 8/1 win. This was then followed in the afternoon with the doubles round robin groups. Group 1 saw Marek reverse his fortunes and along side partner John Prenn they won all their matches to progress to the semi-finals, then there was a deciding match between Richard Moore & Jonathan Fisher and Andrew Rogers & Robin Williams to decide who followed them in qualification. It was a tight affair, but Richard & Jonathan edged it 6/4 to take the runners up spot.

Group 2 was a group of 3 due to an injury withdrawal, Philip Shaw-Hamilton & Nigel Draffan were too strong in both of their matches and progress to the semis with 2 wins which meant we had another deciding match between John Ward & Simon De Halpert and John East & Alan Oliver. It was John & Alan who took the final spot in the semi-finals with an 8/3 win.

Saturday got off to a slow start, unfortunately due to a couple more injuries the first 2 matches could not take place, so this put the top 2 seeds John Prenn & Philip Shaw-Hamilton into the semi finals waiting for opponents. So first match up was Alan Oliver taking on Simon De Halpert for the right to take on John P. They traded games up to 4/4, but it was Alan who found the right shots and has a run of 4 games to take the match. John East then took on John Ward in the last QF, John E got off to a great start and raced to a 5 game lead then, as always, John W dug deep and wouldn’t give in easily there were many epic deuce games that followed but John E managed to get over the line in most of them and took the match 8/2 avenging a couple of defeats to John W in previous years in the competition.

The semi finals then followed with Alan O vs John P first up. Alan came out all guns blazing with nothing to lose against the top seed and took an early lead of 2 games to 1, but John then settled down in his first singles match of the weekend and dominated from the service end to win through to the final 8/2. Philp S-H then took to the court for his first singles match, against John E. Philp’s left-handed serve was on fire from the start and pinned John down at the hazard end for much of the match. John battled hard but couldn’t prevent Phil moving through with a 8/1 win.

Sunday was finals day, due to the injuries and withdrawals from the plate competition we kicked off with the Singles Final between our top 2 seeds John Prenn & Philip Shaw-Hamilton which was a repeat of last years championship match. Philip was looking to reverse the result from last year and battled hard, but John still a fantastic athlete was too solid and found the answers to Philip’s tricky railroad and secured his 2nd Over 70’s title with a 8/2 win.

The single plate final followed with Seacourt team mates John Ward & Simon De Halpert now aged 84 and79 facing off against each other, it was a great match with Simon’s deadly accurate cut balls into the corners causing some damage early on, but John called upon all his experience to find the serves to stop this happening .which was the key, and he took the match 8/4.

We concluded the weekend with the double semis & final.. Holders John Prenn & Marek Stefanowicz over came a tricky match with John East & Alan Oliver and moved into the final winning 8/4 and then Philip Shaw-Hamilton & Nigel Draffan proved too strong for Richard Moore & Jonathan Fisher and dominated this match winning 8/2.

So, like the singles, we had another repeat of last years final, it proved to be the match of the weekend and a great tactical battle with John winning his service games against Nigel and Philip winning his games serving to Marek, the pairs traded game for game until we got to 4 games all.

The 9th game was the turning point as we got down to 40 all and Nigel forced a ball to the top corner of the dedans to break the cycle… Phil & Nigel then took confidence from this and took the next 3 games,reversing last years result to reclaim the doubles title that they won back in 2022

The tournament was as always, great fun and run again very efficiently by Adam Player and Danny Jones on Wellington College's magnificent court