The Oxfordshire Ladies over 35's team recently competed in the County Cup at Eastbourne.
As always, the team Liz Bamber (Captain), Evelyn Hargraves, Mary Joyner, Jo Love and Esther Symmonds were looking forward to a good weekend's competition. They were hoping that the summer weather of constant rain was not going to spoil this great event and they were lucky. Particularly on the Sunday when the weather here in Oxfordshire was appalling and they managed a full day's play in beautiful sunshine!
Play however was cut short on Friday with Jo Love standing 6-5 up in the final match tie break and though the sun shone the groundsman would allow no further play. We played catch up on Saturday and Sunday and though matches were shortened to sets to 4 games all rubbers were completed. Jo went on to win her tie-break and Mary and Liz came close to winning doubles losing by 7-10 in the match tie break. Sadly we did not win the third doubles so were defeated 2-1 by Cumbria.
Suffolk were the strongest in the group and we lost 2-0 (third rubbers were not played if there was a result after two matches).
We lost a close match with the Northumberland who came second in the group 2-1. Liz narrowly losing the singles 5-4, 5-3, Esther and Jo played a blinder to win the next doubles but the third rubber was lost.
Victory was ours against Northants to round off the day on Sunday. Jo played superbly to secure a singles win 4-2 4-2 and she teamed up with Esther to win the first doubles, thus winning the match.
All in all a great weekend but we stayed put in the bottom division.