The 25/26 season kicked off at Worthing Table Tennis Club at the club’s first 2* tournament of the season.
With a record entry of 55 players and a waiting list of over 20, it’s clear word is getting out about the fantastic, player-focused events the club runs.
This year saw the introduction of a practice room and live scoring projected on to the wall.
The day started with the Men’s Singles and Junior Boys’ events. The junior group stages went as per the seedings other than Jersey’s John Le Fondre coming runner-up in group 1 and James Roberts needing five sets to overcome Liam Higgins.
John set up a quarter-final clash with Harley Guy-Sinclar, which saw John come out as winner and set up a series of all-Jersey clashes. The top half of the draw saw Jersey player Theo De Proeck make his way to the final, taking out top-seeded Welshman Oliver Jordan in the semis. The other semi-final was an all-Jersey clash with Callum Allaway going down to John. The all-Jersey final saw a tight match with Theo coming out 3-1 winner.
The Junior plate event saw an all-Sussex clash in the final with Liam Higgins overcoming Hoy Wen Leung. Both players needed five sets to make the final, overcoming Reais Mogul and Josh Kelly respectively.
The Men’s Singles saw no end of displacements of seeds with some early season rust showing and some summer training paying off for others. Top seed, Harry Yip lost out to Jaydan Griffiths in the group to move to the bottom half of the draw. Group 3 showed what a tricky time of the season it is with a three-way countback with third see Paul Carter losing to Joe Britnell, who then lost to James Black. With just one set in it, Joe won the group and Paul in second with the remaining seeds making it through unscathed.
The top half of the draw was now wide open and saw Jozef Krakovsky take out Jaydan Griffiths to reach the semi-finals before going down to Joe Britnell, who had beaten fifth seed Mario Ioakim in his quarter-final.
The bottom half, with four of the top seeds now in it, saw Harry Yip reach the semi-finals, beating Scott Dawtry before going down to second seed Adam Klos, who had overcome Paul Carter over five sets. The final saw Adam come out winner in three sets.
The plate event was taken home by James Black. Having missed out on the main draw on countback he was in fine form, only dropping one set to Angelo Robles in the quarter-finals on his way to the title. His opponent in the final was Russell Perry, who battled his way through “Kent Corner” having to play his team-mate Simon Kear, who had beaten their other team-mate Ed Matthews.
The junior girls saw another close affair, with the medals being separated by a countback. Lydia White from Kent came out on top, just pipping Jersey Freya Allaway to gold, with Akshita Subramanium just losing out in third.
The Ladies Singles had top-seeded Holly Holder as favourite and Holly duly delivered beating Sue Pingram 3-0 but needing four sets to overcome Polina Shcherbakova, who beat Sue in four sets to claim silver.
In the afternoon, a large group of six in the Ladies’ Open was much tighter than the finishing positions suggest, with only four of the games being 3-0. Holly Holder was again the favourite and duly delivered by winning all her games and all but one of them 3-0. Runner-up was Freya Allaway, winning all four of her other games.
The Men’s Open, unlike the morning, saw the seeds all take their assigned positions, but not without a few scares. John McBeath needed to come back from two sets down to overcome Tim Surrey, who had just had a five-setter to beat Vipan Koul – and just to finish off the group another five-setter for Vipan going down to Jaydan Griffiths. Mario Ioakim needed five sets to beat upcoming Jersey Junior Callum Allaway and Joe Britnell also needed five to beat Mike Lim.
The semi-finals saw all four top seeds face off, Adam Klos was the first to reach the final beating Scott Dawtry in three, while John Mcbeath beat Paul Carter to set up an all Waterside TTC final.
Drawing on his powers of escapology which he had practised early in the group, John once again came back from 2-0 to take the final and the title in a fantastic game. The final can be viewed on the club’s YouTube channel here.
The Men’s Plate was won by Mike Lim, beating Ryan Hobbs in three sets. Mike needed four sets to progress past Arslan Shah in the last four, while Ryan Hobbs took out Damien Laselles in five.
As part of raising the player experience at the event, all the results from the knockouts can be found in the results booklet, while the club partnered up with Worthing Camera Club, who provided five volunteers throughout the day taking hundreds of photos available on the clubs Facebook page.
Worthing Table Tennis Clubs runs a number of national ranking events a full list of events and entry forms can all be found along with other club events at the club website.
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