The Active Newcastle Tennis League Have Their First Winners!

The Active Newcastle Tennis League first round proved a great success and the winners are in!

Local Tennis Leagues grew out of a single set of park courts in North London and a desire by players to have the opportunity to play more friendly, competitive tennis. Now the not-for-profit social enterprise has more than 80 leagues up and down the land.

The winners in the first Newcastle league are:

Group One
Winner: John Waites
Times and tide wait for no man, but John waited until the eleventh hour before landing the third title winning victory of his campaign - and what a cliffhanger it was too! John said;

"It was a hard fought match played in windy conditions.”

Well done to the champ for that win and his two other straight sets victories plus a set converted against Gordon!  Hats off too to the latter who notched up a hugely impressive four wins overall without loss which earned him the runner-up spot. Indeed, Gordon represents a rarity in our leagues - a player denied the top spot despite having played and won all his matches. But that is the nature of bonus points, which reward tennis scheduling in these leagues! In third place, Martin won two of his encounters, one of them a knife-edge encounter with Jason featuring a remarkably tight scoreline.  Jason was unfortunate not to earn at least a point from that contest but did rack up plenty of games in his three matches as did Greg who came close to taking sets off the No.2 and 3.

Group Two
Winner: Lee Breheny
A famous five for Lee earns him his place in Newcastle tennis league history - well done!  The group winner had to overcome stiff challenges from Tony, Tom and Harry along the way, but dropped just one set overall in a gutsy campaign!  His opponent in his last match testified to some of the champion’s qualities in his match report:

"On a nice warm summers evening, my service game deserted me and Lee broke my serve seven times.  When he was not breaking my serve, he was lobbing me, hitting cracking balls deep into all corners of the court.  A well-deserved win for Lee sending him rocketing into the lead with both him and Tony only having Bhavesh to play," Geoffrey

Despite this, runner-up Tony pushed the No.1 all the way on points, taking a set off him in their roller-coaster three setter and racking up four wins during the round.  Tom also achieved a respectable points haul from his own successful quartet, two of which went the distance. Harry and Bhavesh were his opponents on those occasions and both finished with two wins and seven points on the board. Geoffrey took Harry to two tiebreaks when they played and notched up an early season win in hot conditions against Primrose who completed all her matches and chalked up plenty of games in the process.

Group Three
Winner: Jonathan Clay
Jonathan showed no weakness during his incredible feat of Clay which featured four victories at the cost of just twelve games - a round of applause for him!  Runner-up Rich managed to nick five games off the champ and clocked out with four wins in his locker, his last against Stamatina near the end of the season:

"In the final few days of summer and Round 1, Rich and Stamatina met at Exhibition Park Courts on an extremely windy evening.  Stamatina elected to serve and won the opening point, although after that it was largely one-way traffic, with Rich moving quickly to 5-0.  The gusty conditions meant no shot was likely to behave as intended. Indeed, as he served for the first set, Matina quickly snatched three points in a row to steal the game.  Rich immediately broke back to take the set 6-1.   Despite the wind, Matina's ground strokes steadily improved in the second which led to two or three short rallies.  However, Rich steadily moved through the set to take it 6-0 and with it the match.  Rich has now completed all his games and with the two match winning points, moved into equal first place in Group 3 with Jonny Clay." Rich

Chris achieved a hat-trick overall having bounced back from a set down in his first match against Keith who also took Rich to three sets before bagging two scalps of his own.  Stamatina saved her champagne moment until the last match of the season with success against Alison who also achieved her biggest games tally of the round - well done!

The next round of the Newcastle leagues runs from 19th Sept to 13th November, and closes for entries on 16 September.

To view the results of the local leagues and find out more, please click here.