The 9th Ponteland Junior Open Tennis Tournament sponsored by Horton Grange Country House Hotel is considered to be one of the largest Junior Tournaments in the North East with over 170 entries.
Players travelled from as far as Lancashire and Scotland to play with many local players getting a chance to play high quality Tennis on their door step.
The events run from 8U's to 18U's and on the first day of the Tournament, Sun 8th July, over 60 9U's and 10U's got the tournament started. The Boys 9U's was won by Will Gray from Whitley Bay and the runner up was Ronan Lunn from Cramlington. The Girls event was won by Cara Todd from Durham and the runner up was Elena Baughman Sanders from Morpeth.
The 10U Boys was won by Ali Hassan from Cumbria and it was a superb final of long rallies and powerful attacking shots by Hassan. His tough opponent and eventual runner up was James Parkin from Gateshead. The Girls 10U final was won by Natalie Flinn from Lancashire in a match of the highest quality against Maddy Virgo from Durham.
Between Monday and Wednesday the 12U and 16U events got under way. In past the tournament has been a knockout event running over the whole week. This year it was decided to change the format and have Compass, Round Robin or Consolation events to try to maximise the number of matches each player would have over a shorter period of time - this resulted in over 285 matches in the main draw plus extra matches in the playback rounds. This was made possible by the superb organisational skills of this year's new referee Lisa Lemberger whose scheduling allowed the tournament to complete despite losing a whole evening’s play on Wednesday due to the normal heavy rain everyone has been experiencing. The 12U Boys Singles was eventually completed on Saturday and was won by Christopher Jeffery of Ponteland who was victorious over Calum Todd from Sunderland. The 12U Girls round robin event (in which every player plays each other) was won by Long-Ching Cheung from Gosforth - she had a 100% win record and Tamara Susa was second overall.
The 16U Boys was won by Rory Thompson by virtue of a walkover against Ollie Jansen who managed to dislocate his thumb at school and was unable to complete the event. Rory also won the 18U Doubles with Martin Slater to add to his list of Ponteland Open titles he has won over the years.
The biggest draw in the tournament was the Boys 14U Singles with 28 players and this was won by Joshua Farmer from Middlesborough in a superb 3 set victory over Ben Emmerson from Sunderland in Tennis of the highest quality.
The 14U Girls was won by Victoria Lapthorne from Yorkshire with a finals win over Long-Ching Cheung.
The 18U Boys Singles was won by Daniel Simpson from Cullercoats again by virtue of a 100% win record in a round robin event - Cameron Haswell from Gosforth was runner up.
On the final day of the Tournament the 8U's Mini Red Tournament was held at Ponteland Middle School and umpiring was assisted by local coaches and parents to make sure all went smoothly.
The winner of the Boys 8U's, making it a family double this week, was Marcus Jeffery from Ponteland who is trying to catch up with his big brother Christopher with a really close win in the final against Matthew Nice from Tynemouth.
The girls event was won by Ellie Gordon from Sunderland and second in the round robin event was Kirstin McLeod from Ponteland.