The Geoff Reed Centre at FB Fields St. Clement in Jersey was packed to the gunnels from 8:30 in the morning with competitors, supporters and spectators from all over the UK and Ireland, Slovakia, Turkey and of course Jersey and Guernsey.
The action started at 9.00am with the two man team events. In the Junior Team the top 2 seeds and local players Hugo Tupper/Chris Morshead and Jack Mills/Kelsey le Maistre made the final after negotiating matches against the Gosselin brothers Tyler and Jacob, Jordan Wykes and Luc Miller. The all local final and title went to Tupper and Morshead 3-0 but there were close games which were keenly contested, especially the doubles which went to the wire.
The Veterans Team also progressed according to the seedings. Jersey’s Eugene Ellis and Bobby Vincent saw off mainland opposition from Steve Dickinson and Winifred Vaughan and then the experienced Sue Collier and Sandra Rider from Cheshire to make the final.
There they met Sanja Clements and Jane Vickers from Dorset and Derbyshire respectively who had put paid to Guernsey’s Dawn Morgan and Martin Sarre in the quarters 3-1. The final proved to be girl power as the audience got behind the ladies duo who responded with some magnificent shots to seal the crucial doubles 3-0 before Clements sealed the title 3-1 by beating Ellis 3-2 in a pulsating and deciding singles.
The temperature went up more than a few notches in the afternoon’s Men’s and Womens’s team events as the big guns entered the fray. In the Men’s team there was plenty of local interest with young Jordan Wykes taking a game off the No2 seed Chris Doran 15-13 before his illustrious opponent put on the after burners.
Doran from Northampton and Paul McCreery from Ireland the No1 seeds for the team event ran out 3-0 winners eventually against Wykes and Tyler Gosselin to reach the quarters. Also in the top half of the draw Max Tupper and Josh Band beat fellow Islanders Tom Marsay and Jack Messervy to set up the match against the number 1 seeds.
Band and Tupper played exceedingly well but couldn’t match the level of their seasoned International opponents losing 3-0. Craig Gascoyne the Jersey No1 was teamed up with Damien Nicholls from Shropshire, a former NatWest Open Champion, and after a comfortable win against David Arrowsmith and Steve Smith from England they faced Dorset’s dynamic duo Nathan Bingham and Steve Foster who had earlier beaten Jersey’s Yogi Ellis and Luke Walker 3-0.
Gascoyne and Nicholls played brilliantly with Gascoyne edging out Foster 3-2 and then combining with his partner to come back twice from a game down to win the doubles in the fifth to seal their 3-0 overall win to set up the showdown with the No1 seeds Doran and McCreery. Doran and McCreery however were focused on reaching the final and did so with an emphatic 3-0 win.
In the bottom half of the draw third seeds Michael O’ Driscoll and Matt Ware beat Jacob Gosselin and Luc Miller from Jersey and were expecting to play Guernsey’s Garry Dodd and Rory Scott from Sussex if things went to ranking. However, Hugo Tupper and Chris Morshead both beat Scott and clinched an historic match win by taking the doubles 3-2 to upset the form book.
Their joy was short-lived though as the English duo cruised into the semis 3-0. Here Ware and O’Driscoll faced the number 2 seeds Darius Knight from Surrey and Sam Novota from Slovakia who had reached the semis after dispatching Turkey’s Osman Yildrim and Winifred Vaughan and then Jersey’s top Polish pair Marcin Jurkiewicz and Grzegorz Frankowski without dropping a game in either match.
Knight recovered from a game down to defeat Ware 3-1 before the former European Junior Champion O’Driscoll beat the Slovak No.6 Novota 3-1 to level the match score. The all important doubles went to Knight and Novota 11-6 in the fifth after a titanic struggle of all out attacking play. Knight then sealed his team’s place in the final after recovering from a game down to defeat Mike O’Driscoll 3-1 (2-11, 12-10, 13-11, 11-6).
So, the final had Darius Knight and Sam Novota squaring up to Chris Doran and Paul McCreery. First blood went to the top seeds with Doran, who was never behind, in his well crafted 3-1 victory over Knight. Novota restored parity with a barnstorming win against McCreery 3-0 with points gleaned from exquisite backhand shots. The important doubles went the way of Knight and Novota 3-1 before Doran sent the match into the deciding final singles with his 3-0 win against Novota. In the final match Knight was on a mission beating McCreery at a canter with some booming forehands to seal the title.
The Women’s team event supplied the first big shock of the day with Sanja Clements and Tressa Armitage reaching the final by beating the No1 seeds Alice Loveridge from Guernsey and Emma Vickers from Derbyshire 3-1 with Loveridge losing both her singles 3-2.
Jersey’s Kelsey le Maistre had a great singles win against Sandra Rider and combined with Sussex’s Emma Torkington well to progress to the semis as 3-0 winners. Here they met their nemesis in the number 2 seeds Hannah Hicks and Chloe Thomas who cruised through to meet their Bournemouth Sports club mates in the final. In the end it was the second seeds in the final who kept their nerve to take the title with a 3–0 win over Armitage and Clements.