On Sunday 9th September Ben Smith (Great Missenden and Halton) won the U10 Summer Regional Tour Finals held at the National Tennis Centre, Roehampton. The Summer Regional Tour includes nearly all the grade 3 tournaments played in the summer season and in order to qualify for the final you have to have the highest number of points in the Region or be in the next 5 players in the country. Having won five grade 3 tournaments and been the runner up in a sixth, Ben headed up the Eastern Regional Leaderboard and was therefore invited to play along with 11 other boys from all around the UK over two days at the NTC. On the first day he had a very tough match against Barney Fitzpatrick from Yorkshire and finally won 12-10 in the third set. His second match was a little easier and he came through 4-1, 4-1. This meant that he qualified into the top four players who came back on the Sunday to play a four man compass draw. His first match was against a very hard hitting Louis Skupien from Somerset and it took a while before he overcame him 5-3, 5-3. In the final he met another Eastern region competitor - Harry Wendelken. Harry took the first set easily and it looked like it would be short final. However Ben fought back from match point to Harry at 3-2 down in the second to take the set 5-3 and then finished the match by a very convincing 10-1 tie-break. The weekend was made even more exciting as Laura Robson had returned from her victories in the US Open and was training on the next door court!
Fantastic result, well done Ben!