Batchwood HPC player Oliver Tarvet served up his first Summer National Tour win with some excellent play at the LTA Grade 2 9&U Clay Court Tournament held at Gosling Sports Park over the weekend.
The day started well with preliminary group match wins against Nottinghamshire’s Kieran O’Driscoll-Pabla 7-1, 7-5 and Middlesex’s Gabriel Curreli 7-2, 7-3. In other group matches several top seeds were not having it all their own way ultimately leading to the round of 16 knockout stage having a rather topsy turvy look to it. Oliver, however, continued to use the full width of the court to create winning opportunities with effective drop shots and solid ground strokes to win through to the quarter-finals.
There he arguably had his best performance of the day against in-form Middlesex boy Nikolai Marin to secure a 7-2, 7-4 win.
A solid return of service and dogged defence against Hertfordshire big hitter Joel Pierleoni helped ease Oliver in to the final 7-3, 7-3 where he again met Kieran O’Driscoll-Pabla.
In a nervy final both boys were unable to reproduce their best tennis, but fewer unforced errors gave Oliver a straight sets victory 7-4, 7-5 ensuring the tournament was won without dropping a set.
Overall it was an extremely successful weekend for the St Albans club with other Batchwood performance players Kade Nevelling finishing in 7th place, Josh Ben 10th and Gugan Muralitharan a very creditable 20st place in his first National Tour event.
Elsewhere Oliver Tarvet also enjoyed Regional Tour success with wins at Ipswich Toyota Junior Open and Chesham Bois LTC Open Junior Tournament to complete memorable half term holidays.