THE hotly anticipated men’s singles final came down to a match between coach Sebastien Scaux and Jarl Ford at the Ely Tennis Championships.

Tennis

There was a surprise in the semi-finals, at least in terms of rankings, when Jarl Ford defeated Piers Tildesley, the club’s number one, 3-6 6-4 6-4 in a marathon match and in very windy conditions.

There was no upset in the final though, as Sebastien defended his title from last year, with a 6-1, 6-4 win over Jarl, who was making his first appearance in the men’s final.

The match grew tight at the start of the second set with Jarl breaking Sebastien’s serve to come back to 3-3. Unfortunately he could not hold his following service game.

“The match started out really quickly,” said Jarl. “I had trouble getting everything in and he took a quick lead. After that I started getting warmed up and hitting my shots better. I got a game in the first set, but it was too little, too late.

“The second set started out perfectly; I was hitting everything.”

“It was closer than the score suggests,” said Sebastien. “Most of his service games went to deuces. When the first game of the match lasted more than 10mn I thought we were going to be on court for a long time. I was happy to break his serve in the first game of the match as it took some pressure off me”.

For the second year in a row, Karen Goodman was the women’s singles winner and like last year Honor Porter was her opponent. Karen took the first set 6-0 thanks to her great technique and tactics but in the second set Honor’s power and tenacity kept her in the match. At 5-4 Karen had to serve for the match. She started shakily with a double fault but won the next 4 points to clinch the title.

Karen won the women’s singles title for the third year running to bring her total singles wins to 9 in 11 years.

Karen Goodman teamed up with Sue Didlick hoping to win the women’s doubles title but Honor Porter and Mary had other ideas. With a brilliant display from Mary, who hardly missed a ball, the pair took the title 6-2 6-2 and a bit of sweet revenge for Honor over Karen.

The men’s doubles final saw the favourites Piers Tildesley and Jarl Ford take on Geoff Powell and coach Neil O’Donohue, with Geoff and Neil battling well to win the first set 6-4. The second set saw them save several set points to eventually win the set and the match in a tie break.

In the mixed doubles all eyes were on Geoff Powell and Honor Porter who eliminated last year champions in their semi-final. Their opponents for the finals, Karen Goodman and Graham Brown tried their utmost to take the title winning the first set in a tie break and they were 3-0 up in the second set until they finally succumbed to Geoff and Honor who won several games on the trot to win the second set 6-4. Geoff and Honor then went on to win the third set comfortably 6-1 to take the title.