O60 County Report 6/7 September, 2025

Note: Somerset padel team selection is not currently controlled by SLTA.

The 2nd 060 County Padel Championship took place at Rocket Padel in Bristol over 6/7th September.

With Somerset reaching new heights in the 050’s could we do it again in the 060’s.

Saturday is mixed day so first up was Gloucestershire, last year’s winners and with 3 players in the UK top 10 060 rankings.  

Stuart Farrar & Kelly Cunningham formed a new partnership with Fast 4 scoring. We took the first set 4-0 and were pegged back 4-2 to set up a tie break to 10. A seesaw championship tie break saw Gloucestershire take it 10-8.

Another new pairing saw Duncan Alexander making his county debut with county regular Sian Lewis-Williams in the 2nd pair competing well in a 4-0 4-1 defeat giving an unsurprising 2-0 win to Gloucestershire.

The 2nd mixed match saw us up against the group’s top seeds Channel Islands. With Stuart partnering Kelly we stood at 1 set each after two 7-point tie breaks giving a 4-3,3-4 score but the Championship tie break tides turned in our favour as we came home 10-6 winners. 

Duncan & Sian were now starting to gel with a close tie break first set and then they just slipped away 1-4 in the second so with the match at 1 all we had our first shoot out to 10 which we narrowly lost... you guessed it 10-8. So close yet again to a county win.

Our last mixed match V Warwickshire saw Robert Franks making his debut with Kelly take the first set on a tie break, lose the second set tie break and then winning a championship tie break 10-6 so one up. 

In the 2nd pair Marcus Ballyn was making his debut with Sian and they competed well just losing a first set tie break 3-4 followed by a 1-4 set so they were just starting to find their feet as a new pair.

So, at 1 match each one player from each pair is selected to compete in a shoot out to 10. So, with Marcus and Kelly chosen to do battle the match hung in the balance at 6-6 only for a few rallies going their way for a 10-6 win for Warwickshire. The margins between a win and a loss are small so shoot outs will be a focus for us going forward.

So, with the men nicely warmed up we were straight into our first men’s match against another seeded team East Scotland. With Stuart & Duncan starting slowly with a 3-6 first set we set about trying to return some viscous serves but with only marginal improvement we went down 4-6 to one of the UK’s top ranked 060 pairs.

In the 2nd pair we saw Vince White make his debut with Marcus against a pair with high UK 060 rankings and after a gallant effort they were unable to pressure their opponents sufficiently giving East of Scotland a 2-0 match win. How i just love playing “counties” with a country in their name.

So, we moved onto our next men’s match v Warwickshire with Stuart & Duncan coming home comfortably 6-2,6-4. Our second pair saw a debut for David Horler partnering Rob in what was a great match going 6-4 up but were pegged back 5-7 to set up a tie break to 10 which went… wait for it! … 10-7 to Somerset! to set up another shoot out to 10. 

With Stuart partnering Rob we reversed the tide of 10-8 losses to come home 10-7 for our first 060 men’s county win. Vamos!

The first day ended with a women’s match V top seeds in the group Surrey with Rose Bamber making her debut with Sian and Melanie Healy making her debut with Kelly. Both pairs played as well as they could against a team fielding four players in the top 15 UK 060 rankings. 2-0 to Surrey. It was unlucky that this match was scheduled on the show court for filming and not one of their other matches.

An early start on Sunday saw the women taking on Suffolk with new pairings of Rose & Kelly and Sian and Melanie. A seesaw first set saw us take the lead 7-6 with Suffolk hitting back 6-4 with more aggressive net play, so off we went again to a championship tie break only this time we won it 10-7 so one up.

Although Melanie & Sian were both playing better Padel it was not enough to challenge their more experienced opponents so off we went to another shoot out.

With Sian & Rose chosen to do battle our hopes were high of a match win but with the scores very close until the end Suffolk sneaked it 11-9. The positive here is we don’t often lose a shootout easily.

We fielded the same pairs in the last women’s against Essex who fielded four UK ranked players 060. First up was Rose & Kelly, now working well together as a pair just losing out 6-4. A change to more aggressive net play saw them come back 6-2 setting up another nail-biting championship tie break.

Taking confidence from their last tie break performance they smashed it 10-2.

So, on went Sian and Melanie who were now improving all the time but up against much stronger opponents their score did not reflect how much they had improved over the weekends play.

So off we went to another shout out which was very exciting for the increasing numbers of supporters watching.

With Sian having played 6 matches so far, the task of overcoming a more experienced pair with Rose was just a little to much with Essex taking it 10-4.

The men still had two matches to play so first up was Rob and David v the Channel Islands who were fielding two players in the UK 060 top 10 rankings. They both raised their games to try and stay with their more experienced opponents with some excellent lobs to get to 3-6.

The 2nd set saw the CI being more aggressive giving them a 6-1 match win. The scores did not reflect the result as a large crowd watched around the court and on You Tube.

We then needed Vince partnering Marcus to win in the 2nd pair and after a solid start they just lost out 4-6, 3-6 after putting up a good fight.

The last match of the weekend was against Devon who we had targeted as a win in a local derby style match.

We got off to a slow start with Stuart & Rob losing the first 5-7 but after a tactical change eased the 2nd 6-3 to set up another championship tie break. We carried on our good form of the 2nd set to romp home 10-2.

Meanwhile David & Marcus commented “Devon came fast out of the starting blocks and although we got into our rhythm in the second set, couldn’t make up the deficit.   On any other day we could have won” …...so off we went to another shoot out.

With Stuart and David tasked to bring home our 2nd men’s victory it never looked in doubt and after a great start to 5-0 a 10-2 score sealed the overall match win in front of a decent crowd.

So overall we had a very successful weekend breaking new ground with two men’s victories, reaching 2 shoot outs in the mixed and 2 in the women’s which could so easily have been victories. All this with 8 players making their debuts and having to form new partnerships. 

I was immensely proud of how we all came together over the last month as a team and how we all supported each other throughout.

As we have shown each year, we will comeback with improving results. We can look forward to: several new indoor venues planned in the county, new players turning 60 and our current players who have learned from their experiences in competing so well against the best players in the country. 

Stuart Farrar