What an amazing weekend for the Somerset Padel teams at the UK County Championships.

Despite some tough battles we came away with some great wins against some much bigger counties that typically have indoor padel venues.

Here are the highlights of all the matches.

Saturday morning kicked off against Berkshire with Stuart Farrar & Kerry Quirk beating the No.2 pair vs UK No.8 050 player Peter Wright and his partner in straight sets to set up No.1 pair Finn Robertson’s & Natalie Ackland. A great match saw them go down 2 sets to 1 to a very good pair of which Kieran Muir is UK top 100 and a professional padel coach. Cue then the super tie break to 10 with Finn & Kerry gelling well to go 8-5 up only 3 nervy volleys let Berkshire in who used this momentum to win 10-8. A case of deja vu occurred when a similar lead let slip in the 040’s in June.

Some high level Padel continued into the 2nd mixed vs Gloucestershire. A comfortable straight sets win for Adam Buttigieg & Kerry teed up Finn & Natalie vs UK No.1 060 and No.4 050 player Heather Sheridan and her very useful partner. This match went to another super tie break after a 2-6,4-6 defeat. With a history of tie break defeats fresh in the memory from earlier in the year we held our nerve to absolutely smash it 10-1 and our first mixed win as a county.

First match in the afternoon was a mixed vs UK title winners Yorkshire. After the efforts of the morning there was no surprise in the 2/0 defeat other than a major mix up in the scores which didn’t go Somersets way with pair 1 Finn & debutant Beth Lacey. Finn asked them to clarify the score only for them to reply… “why are you trying to pull a fast one” which given the score was out of order. What was more surprising was an apology to Stuart the County Captain by Yorkshire after the match.

Next saw the Women’s first match vs a strong Middlesex and with both pairs gaining 4 games each set they were starting to play excellent match style padel with fewer errors.

The first Men’s match also produced the same result against Middlesex with Richard Gabb & Finn just losing out 7-6 in the first set then 6-4. Stuart & Jack Jefferies competed well to 4 and 3 so completing the end of the first day.

First up on Sunday were the men vs Berkshire with Richard & Finn too strong at 1 and Jack & Adam winning equally comfortably so a first ever men’s county victory was notched up.

After a short break the men took on the mighty Surrey who decided they didn’t need Chris Salisbury the UK No.1 to topple us. Rich & Finn (playing his 6th match in 24 hrs with a cold) were playing some great Padel and led 5-4 in the tie break only for two errors to cost them the set. They couldn’t quite replicate the first set going down 6-3. Surrey then took the final match 6-3,6-2 as Jack & Ben Megson took on GB 040 player Ali Anderson and partner.

A quick dash back to Rocket from Surge to see how the women faired against a strong Sussex was greeted with Kerry announcing they had pushed Sussex to a super tie break going down 10-5 which was another superb effort by the ciderwomen.

And finally the women took on highly ranked Gloucestershire with Natalie  & Ines Beeson losing 3-6,4-6. A solid performance by Kerry & Beth Lacey saw them come back from 3-0 down after a quick tactical change by the coach to win the first set 6-3. A counter change in tactics saw Gloucestershire win the 2nd to 2 to set up another tie break that went there way 7-5.

So with two county victories the players can be proud of the improvement they have all made over the last year. 

We have plans to continue our growth and development as the sport builds momentum in our county. 

We will have more regular coaching sessions with friendly matches against South West Counties. We also have a number of development players coming through so we will be back bigger and better for more action next year. We will also practice super tie breaks. The difference between two and four match wins came down to just 7 tie break points!

Vamos Somerset.

Stuart Farrar