Ladies Real Tennis Association

Hatfield played host to the LRTA High Low Doubles for the second time over the weekend and once again it was a great fun event with lots of extremely close matches and great tennis along the way.  The High Low Doubles is a unique event where the highest handicapped player is paired with the lowest handicapped player and placed in a round robin group with all matches played to 1 set off full handicap.

Day 1 sees the bulk of the group matches played and the form pair at the end of the day looked to be Hatfield’s Sarah Sullivan & RTC’s Terri Sheperdigian who were the only pair with a perfect record of 3 wins out of 3, two fairly comfortable 6/2 wins and a very hard 6/5 win over Gabrielle Smart of Paris and Christina Huntsman from Moreton Morrell.  Next best was another Hatfield/RTC partnership of Jill Akers & Peta Louise Jeffery who had managed to win 3 of their 4 matches, the only loss against Sarah & Terri but the great thing was that with 4 group matches still to be played on Sunday, all 6 pairs still had a chance of making it into the semi-final matches to be played later on Sunday.

As mentioned it was all to play for on day 2 as Hatfield’s Lis Hughes and Oratory’s Kim Walker secured their semi-final place with a win in the first match of the day and Sarah & Terri continued their ruthless run with a 6/0 win over Rhona Russell of RTC and Tabitha Jones of Cambridge, ending their chances of progressing and all but guaranteeing Sarah & Terri would finish top of the table.  The penultimate match of the group stage would end up being a test run of the first semi-final match as Jill Akers & Peta Louise Jeffery took on Gabrielle Smart & Christina Huntsman and while Jill & Peta Louise won the group match 6/4, Gabrielle & Christina managed to turn the tables in the semi-final winning 6/3 to take their place in the final after timing their run to perfection!  The final group match was textbook Real Tennis as the only unbeaten pair in the event played the only pair yet to win a match as Sarah & Terri faced Linda Fairbrother of Cambridge and Philippa Wells of Newmarket and as only seems to happen in this great game it was Linda & Philippa who won 6/4 to break their duck and inflict the first defeat of the event to Sarah & Terri.

Sarah & Terri still took their place in the semi-final against Lis Hughes & Kim Walker and sadly for Lis & Kim, the table topping pair of Sarah & Terri were back on form, taking their place in the final against Gabrielle & Christina with a 6/2 win.  The group stage match between the finalists had been a nail biting 6/5 win to Sarah & Terri so while they went in as favourites, it was expected to be a close match.  The form book went out the window at the start of the match though as Gabrielle & Christina moved into a 4/0 lead by virtue of winning 4 40 all points in a row so while the score looked one-sided, there was actually only 4 points between them.  Gradually Sarah & Terri clawed it back until at 3/4 40 all, we had what ended up being the decisive point of the match, Sarah being unable to return a tight serve from Christina to stop the rot and make it 5/3 and this time Sarah & Terri were unable to make a comeback, Gabrielle & Christina closing it out 6/3 for a well deserved win!

Well done to all the players on a fantastic weekend of tennis in which there was some excellent, incredibly close matches and numerous laughs!  Sarah & Terri both attempting to serve at the same time being a definite highlight!  Many thanks to Sarah Sullivan and Linda Fairbrother for their excellent organisation and Sarah, Steve Sullivan and Liz Fisher for providing delicious lunches both days.

Jon Dawes