Watching the BBC weather reports this morning lead to me driving into work with everything crossed as the rain was due to be persistent if not constant all day which is a nightmare scenario for anyone running a outdoor tennis competition. Furthermore, Wednesdays during the County Closed are always due to be busy as all mini tennis matches are due to played (that’s a whopping 200 plus matches), so as you can imagine rain is a very unwelcome guest!
However, when it did rain Billesley Indoor Tennis Centre Manager, Susan Carter and Assistant Manager Denise Wilkins kindly treated us to a tour of the entire venue. You can watch the video a bit further down, it is a real shame we didn’t shoot the video in 3D as there is a little surprise at the end, but I’ll leave you to find out what it is by watching the video.
Before I go any further I must mention that you can track the progress of all County Closed matches online by following this link. As there are so many matches I feel it would be unfair to mention certain individuals over others as in my eyes everyone who competes in the event deserves a special mention. Though I do think four individuals who deserve a mention are the winners and runners up of the Under 8’s Boys & Girls Singles events. I have literally this second just had handed to me the finals scores by tournament referee Tariq Mahmood. In the boys event Finlay Smith (University of Warwick Tennis Club) defeated Thomas Whitwell (Esporta Warwickshire) and in the girls event Elizabeth Shepherd (Edgbaston Priory Club) defeated Rhianna Robertson (Blossomfield Tennis Club). Congratulations to both the Champions and Runners Up for all their efforts during the event and in making the finals.
Now from one set of Champions to another, we managed to catch up with Jake Hersey (Solihull Arden) who was recently crowned AEGON U10 Nationals Champion at Bournemouth, Dorset and his proud coach Gary Naughton. Both Jake and Gary gave their views on the County Closed and tennis in general within Warwickshire, however to see what else they spoke about you will have to watch the interview below.
That about brings the Day 4 Warwickshire County Closed blog to a close, lets hope all this rain peters out overnight and we can have a lovely uninterrupted day of tennis so I have something to blog about!