Title seemed appropriate for a report on the Road to Wimbledon tournament on Sunday 5th May. This gathered 6 girl and 10 boy players to play for the honour of being invited to play at Southsea in July on their grass courts. Photo: Boy Participants.
The team of helpers gathered at 09:00 at the club to prepare for the Road to Wimbledon on a crisp May morning with a slight breeze and sunny intervals forecast for the day. Directing operations was Bill Chatterton ably assisted by Sam and Sharron Ardley, Tom Flynn, Alison Kerslake and Jane Perry. Players, and their supporting teams, started arriving at 09:30 with play due to start at 10:00. Christine Johnston arrived armed with a Lemon Drizzle Cake to provide a bit of dignity to the proceedings! The Girls were to play a World Tennis Finals format Round Robin, semi-finals and final whereas the boys had a straight knockout draw with a round robin match-play for first round losers.
The Girls started with Anu Bamodu beating Georgia Skiada and Erin Perry showed little mercy in dispatching debutante Daisy Robinson (who had that look on her face that said ”you just wait until I’m bigger”) in first round of the girl’s round robin. Meanwhile Sam Goodridge quickly beat Matt Simpson and Jamie Pitman beat Ammar Hamady in Round 1 of the Boy’s competition.
Second round of the girls round-robin Anu beat Erinayu Famuyiwa and Erin beat Ioanna Skiada. Round 2 of the boys saw Ashton Kerslake beat Hariket Trivedi, Sam beat Jacob Allderidge, Nicolaas Van Zyl Smit beat Jamie Pitman and Harry Robinson beat Luke Tuddenham.
Third round of the girls round robin Georgia beat Erinayu and Ioanna beat Daisy. The boy’s consolation had Jamie beat Hariket and Matt, Hariket beat Matt, Luke beat Ammar, Jacob beat Ammar, Luke beat Ammar and Matt beat Luke.
So to the Semi Finals. Erin beat Georgia and Anu beat Ioanna. Ashton beat Sam and Harry beat Nicolaas. So the final were to be between Erin and Anu for the girls and Ashton against Harry.
Erin had tweaked her calf during the warm up (she needs to warm up for the warm up) while Anu, who has only recently joined the ranks of the yellow ball brigade, was raring to go. Erin with her mobility a little hindered tried to use her power from the baseline to defeat Anu but became quite frustrated with the time it took to dispatch her much less experienced opponent. They battled it out for 45 minutes which is quite a time to complete a Fast4 match 4-1, 4-1 so Erin awaited her coronation as Road to Wimbledon Queen of Thornden!
Meanwhile Ashton thought he would have a comfortable match against Harry. Harry had other ideas and before he knew where he was Ashton was down one set 3-4 (tie break played at 3-3 in Fast4). Ashton took time between sets to focus and raised his game to win the second set 0-6 and go on to take the Match Tie-Break 10-4. Great match and shows how good Harry could be if he played more tournaments.
Medals and Trophies were awarded by last year’s Boy’s Road to Wimbledon Champion Sam Ardley to four very satisfied finalists and two most chuffed winners. Erin retired home to rest her leg and enjoy the glow of winning despite the tiredness after four matches. Ashton went home with his sister who had her own glow as she had a successful audition that day. Ashton I am told also glowed with pride and tiredness thinking how he would have felt if he hadn’t turned it round after the first set.
Congratulations to all the players, thanks to the team that helped keep the matches conflict free and to our Chairperson Lady who gave up time to come down and spend time with the supporters and parents. Despite all the effort involved I am looking forward to next year’s competition: so great to see kids who rarely compete really work hard but enjoy the matches win or lose.
Title: Libertines, 2002: Peter Docherty their lead man was injured last week in an encounter with a hedgehog: no connection but I loved the story.