The Finals Day Report

The 2018 Ealing Club Member’s tournament kicked off on a much sunnier and warmer day with an earlier start of 11 am and addition of LTA Umpires and the Ealing Ball Crew.  

In the Open Ladies Singles in a repeat of last year’s 3-hour final between Mili Shah and Sophie Nelson. Mili showed her dominance on the grass to add to her titles and win in a much quicker affair this year.

The Handicap Men’s singles, Ladies Vets Singles and Men’s Vets Singles were also lucky enough to share the 11 am start. Jason Palmer defeated Daniel Villalobos to claim the first match of the day. Despite a delayed start, Anthony Calvert successfully umpired the Men’s vet’s singles and oversaw another Richard Leslie victory against Peter Buck in his attempt to catch up with the number of titles Peter has won in this event.

In the closest match of the morning, third team players and doubles partners Helen Hooke and Juliet Matthews competed in the Ladies Vets Singles. Toe to toe in the first set, Helen edged the set to win 7-6 then dominated the second set to claim the victory in time for the club’s traditional lunch prepared by Carole and Lynn.

For the third year in a row we were guaranteed a new Men’s Singles Champion with first team player Ben Moyon playing up and coming junior Mattias Southcombe. In an exciting match, Ben prevailed in three sets after two hours of enthralling tennis. Ben had a much quicker affair in the Men’s doubles teaming up with Jack Brooker to claim a solid win over Alan Brown and Sam Tirodkar.

Sophie and Mili teamed up in the Open Ladies and dominated to win the title against Anneka and Claire. Sophie then had her final match for the day in the Open Mixed, teaming up with David Charlton they fought well to beat Hiroko and Oliver Craven.

Helen was the most successful player of the day winning 3 out of 3 finals by adding the Ladies Vets Doubles and Restricted Mixed doubles partnering Juliet and Rakesh respectively.

The Ealing Ball Crew were recruited and trained by Steph Brown and Sangeeta Arora and assisted the Open Singles matches. We hope to recruit more ball crew members for 2019.

Thank you to Janice, Henrietta, Sangeeta who organised this year’s tournament and all the volunteer Umpires who made the event much more special for the players.

See all the results here