Old Windsor resident Martin Gunn won successive open tournaments at Cippenham when he captured the Open Singles title at the Cippenham Five by Two Senior and Veterans’ 1-Star Open. Gunn had previously won the Cippenham Super 6 Senior Open title three weeks earlier.

However, Gunn did not manage to retain the Veterans’ Singles title that he also won at the same event last year. That accolade went to Steve Davis, his fourth Cippenham veterans’ title overall but the first since 2007.

In the morning’s Veterans’ Singles, the top two seeds, Gunn and Anthony Corbin, made light work of their preliminary round groups but the third and fourth seeds had to be content with qualifying in second place. Neil Wright went down 3-0 to Elson Costa while Cookham Social player Mark Banks was beaten by Jeremy Wu. The other group winners were Steve Davis and Cippenham’s Simon Vine.

Vine was unlucky to be drawn against the displaced third seed Neil Wright in the first round of the knockout stages while another Cippenham stalwart, Mike Rhodes, departed at the hands of Kevin Nicholls. Banks, meanwhile secured his place in the quarter-final by beating Alex Aston 3-0.

Wright then shocked top seed Gunn in the quarter-finals while Davis eased past Wu, Banks went out to Costa and Corbin came back from 2-0 down to end Nicholls’ run.

The evergreen Davis pipped Wright 3-1 in his semi-final at the top of the draw while in the lower half it was Corbin who came back from 2-0 down to defeat Costa. The final was a close affair in which Corbin led 2-1 but the honours eventually went to Steve Davis 11-9 in the fifth game.

Meanwhile tournament organiser Paul Baker was leaving a wake of destruction in the consolation event which he won with a 3-1 victory over Ken Lewis in the final.

In the afternoon attention turned to the Open Singles. All four seeds won their preliminary stage groups while Mike Rhodes commenced a long run in the competition when he won Group 7. Rhodes’ Cippenham team-mate Paul Baker survived a three-way tie to emerge top of Group 8. Baker then succumbed in the first knock-out round to Chris Penrose but not before he had held a 2-0 lead.

The senior event had a large veterans flavour to it: in fact, Penrose and Rory Scott were the only players to reach the quarter-final who had not played earlier in the veterans’ event. Top seed Martin Gunn was in no mood to surrender this event and he eliminated the veterans’ champion Steve Davis in the quarters. Neil Wright beat Kevin Nicholls to set up the second meeting of the day between Gunn and Wright but this time it was the top seed that prevailed, reversing the earlier result.

Mike Rhodes put an end to Rory Scott’s ambitions and set up a semi-final meeting with Anthony Corbin, who beat Chris Penrose. Against all odds, it was Rhodes that emerged from his battle with Corbin in the semi-final, winning 3-2, but his time was up and the Cippenham star was unable to dent Gunn in the final.

The tournament was organised by Paul Baker and refereed by Ken Phillips.

Results:

	Winner:	Runner-up:
Open Singles	Martin Gunn (Avon)	Mike Rhodes (Hants)
Open Consolation	Alex Aston (Northants)	Samson Bekeli (Surrey)
Veterans’ Singles	Steve Davis (Surrey)	Anthony Corbin (Herts)
Veterans’ Consolation	Paul Baker (Surrey)	Ken Lewis (Essex)