Today saw the start of David Lloyd Teesside campaign in the Men’s Aegon Regional League 2013. The players were already excited prior to their matches due to receiving their Babolat prizes!
David Lloyd Teesside squad comprises a great mix of six players. There is the young, tall, lefty who no one likes to play; Josh Coulthard. Then there is Kev Rudd with his big serve and ability to grind out matches by ‘slicing and dicing’. Alan Smith team captain and all round organiser with doubles being his better part of his game. Andrew Greaves, the big hitter with growing consistency, he is better than his rating suggests. We then have Andrew Sheret who is playing his way back into tennis after a long absence from the game. Lastly Scott Jones the 100% effort player who slides dives and chases the ball down.
As one of the ‘early’ buyers of the new Nike team kit that was on offer for teams this year we went in to the BTQ Winning Look draw at the end of February to receive £200 of Babolat Kit. Luckily we came out on top and received
- 6 x Babolat Team Line Backpacks
- 6 sets of Babolat RPM Team String
- 6 packs of 2 Custom Babolat Dampeners
- 6 packs of 3 Babolat Pro Tour Over Grips
- 1 box (18 tubes) of Babolat Team Balls
The weather was 6c in Teesside, with a wind speed of 10mph.When playing at the end nearest the club, players felt they had a big serve on the astro turf courts; this was especially helpful for 6ft 4in Josh Coulthard! Josh rushed to an early lead in his singles match 6-0 against Ben Arkut. He followed his good fortune up in the second set with a 6-2. Closing the match out with some big serves and solid groundstrokes.
However for team captain Alan Smith the singles rubber did not go to plan and after a scrappy first set where breaks had been traded early on and confusion over the scoring in the first set set saw Michael Huby took the set 6-4 . Michael then went on to take the second set 6-2 playing with good aggression when it counted.
Both Josh and Alan felt good going into their doubles match and came out with a tie break win 10-3 in the third, it seemed they played slightly more solid than the Cottingham pair.
The third and fourth singles had a poor start in their doubles match and lost the first set 6-2. However, the pair recovered well thanks to some excellent serving. As well as this they decided to hit more shots in the court which always helps (!) and came through 10- 4 in the match tiebreak
After a poor start from Kev Rudd (hitting five double faults and nearly winning the first game) he took the first set 6-3. After leading 5-2 with some match points in the second set he nearly gave the match away, eventually winning the tie break with some great sliding and slicing, being careful of a recovering calf injury. Well done Kev.
The fourth seeds Andrew Greaves and Adam Maw (Cottingham LTC) looked to be having a closer game than the score would have suggested with Andrew claiming victory 6-4, 6-0 . Andrew was glad of the team practice session last week. He said he needed to adjust to match conditions.
In closing all of the David Lloyd Players would like to thank Kit House and the LTA for the Nike tennis shirts. They were very comfortable and smart. Babolat should also get a thank you for contributing the prizes for the draw. They will definitely come in handy the way Kev Rudd goes through strings!
Result: David Lloyd Teesside def. Cottingham LTC 10-2