Corby Tennis Centre player, Joe Tyler has finished the year in exceptional form. Having won the recent Tier 1 Aegon British Tour event, he managed to secure the last slot in the draw for the Aegon British Tour Masters event at Loughborough. This sees the top 16 players invited from all the 35 British Tour events that have taken place in 2016.
The draw began with Joe up against the leader of the points table, Luke Oakley from Warwickshire. Luke has an ATP World Ranking of 1357 and was the No4 seed for this event. Despite losing the first set 2-6, Tyler went on to take the match fairly comfortably in the next two sets, by 6-2 6-3.
In the quarter finals, Joe was up against Paul Jubb from Yorkshire, who he had beaten earlier in the year in Qatar at a strong Junior ITF event. Tyler won through in straight sets 7-5 6-4 to set up a semi final against another player with an ATP ranking of 954, Kieren Oakley from Sussex. Oakley was the number 2 seed here, but despite starting slowly, Tyler fought back to take the first set 7-5 in the tie-break. He lost the second set quickly 1-6, then served for the match at 5-3 up in the third set, but got broken. Showing great composure, Joe used the change of ends to regroup, and came out and broke the Oakley serve to take the match 6-4 in the third. This meant Joe was through to the final.
Playing on Saturday 10th December, the Mens Final took place straight after the Ladies Final, which saw both the top seeds taking part, with Freya Christie (335) beating Beth Grey (732) by the comfortable margin of 6-2 6-2. The crowd was over 100+, which really adds to the atmosphere for the players, and the experience of No1 seed Neil Pauffley (ATP 598) was clear to see. He held serve in the opening game of the match, and then broke the Tyler serve to take a 2-0 lead, and before you knew it, the first set had gone 6-0. Joe stepped up his game in the second set, but the strong resilience of Pauffley from the back of the court, and the strength of his serve made it really tough for Joe. The 17 year old youngster from Corby fought hard and managed to hold his own serve all the way through the set until 4-5, when he had the 8th net chord of the match go against him, to go 0-30, and the strong Pauffley took theh small chance that had opened up to take the game and the match 6-0 6-4.
It was a great experience for Joe, who has now beaten 4 players with an ATP World Ranking in the past 6 weeks. The Aegon British Tour is a brilliant set of events that gives young aspiring players the opportunity to compete against some vastly experienced older campaigners.
If you would like to see a little of the match, here’s a link to the highlights of Joe’s final through London Tennis Tube