(picture: left to right - Will Woodrow, Brent Horner, Dan Phillis, Lindsay Edgar)

Postponement due to Storm Eunice meant this mouth-watering fixture took place a week later than initially scheduled and this saw Lindsay Edgar/Dan Phillis replace Clint Cockroft/Sam Benn who had half-term family commitments. 

Upon arrival at the club in Knaresborough we were warmly greeted by Mike & Brad Triffitt, who would make up half our opposition this evening, and are no strangers to us given they also often represent Wetherby. Mike has been really helpful in organising friendlies against us in the last couple of years and thanks go to him for that.

Onto the action now and we decided to go with Leeds league scoring, which is 2 sets against each pair, meaning its a best of 8 sets in total. Myself (Brent) and Will were up against Mike & Brad first and raced into an early 3-0 lead. We continued to dominate the first set, not doing anything particularly special but keeping our error count super low and finishing off anything that moved at the net. We won the set with a bagel (6-0).

It was no surprise when our opponents improved massively in the 2nd, after shaking off the cobwebs Brad started to play his usual high level, moving around the court with great speed and anticipation, whilst Mike finished off plenty of volleys at the net with a degree of authority. The set was finely poised at 4-5 with Will to serve, when we fell 15-40 down, with Knaresborough looking to pounce upon 2 set points to claim a draw. Fortunately, Will had other ideas and hammered down an ace, followed by a 30-40 point where he simply wouldn't miss. We went on to take the set 7-5 and gave Tadcaster a 2-0 set lead. 

Lindsay and Dan on the other court looked to play an extremely competitive first set, just falling 6-4 to two solid and hard-hitting Knaresborough players in Andrew Little and Paul White. Lindsay looked to be displaying his usual level of consistency via his forehand groundstrokes whilst Dan served well and tried to be aggressive whenever possible. The 2nd set wasn't as close and the experienced hosts took it 6-1 to level up the match at the halfway stage.

With the Friday nightlife scene calling out to a few of the younger lads, it was decided that timewise it would be sensible to revert to best of 12 games for the final two rubbers. Will & I took on Andrew and Paul, and again started well, racing into a 4-0 lead despite the Knaresborough chaps having multiple gamepoints in both of their service games. Stubborn consistency was really the theme of the night for us, we formed a really nice partnership, one of us intercepting at the net whenever possible whilst the other stayed solid at the back of the court. We eventually took the match 8-4 though the scoreline felt a touch harsh on the hosts in truth.

All eyes fell to court 2 where a Tad win would result in a victorious opener to our pre-season campaign. Unfortunately though Knaresborough were back on their game and despite some nice down the line winners from Dan there were just a few too many errors from the the Tad duo, who were playing their first match together whilst it was match number 10,345 for the father and son duo in opposition. It ended 10-2. 

This ultimately meant the match ended in a 3-3 tie, though in truth the result took on little relevance, it was just nice to be back out on court, enjoying a pleasant evening. Tennis was the winner tonight.