Only 15 players took part in the Jarvis Sports Horsham Spinners Veterans and Senior 1 Star Ratings tournament at the new base of Horsham Spinners Table Tennis Club, Farlington School.

However, despite the low entry, all players got a lot of matches. There were 10 players in the vets and nine players in the seniors and the format was round-robin groups, so vets got nine matches and seniors got eight matches, although four vets played both vets and seniors, so these players got up to 17 matches.

Veterans

Rory Scott (IRL) of host club Horsham Spinners TTC was top seed an did indeed win all nine of his matches, but was pushed to five sets by Bob Lowe (Sx-Laughton TTC) and lost just one more end to Chris Pullinger (Sy-Foresters TTC).

Second seed Vadym Krevs (He) won his remaining eight matches to finish in second place. However, he scraped victory vs Fawzi Yousif (Sx-Crawley Community TTC) 14-12 in the fifth end and was also taken to five by Lowe.

Unranked Yousif, who is enjoying a comeback after years of injury, won six matches, losing to the top two plus Pullinger (3-2). He only just beat Ajay Shah (Sy) 12-10 in the fifth end and Paul Nicol (E) 11-8 in the fifth.

Four players all won four matches each, and had to be separated by countback and finished in the following order: Lowe (fourth), Shah (fifth), Jonathan Chernett (Sy) (sixth) and Pullinger (seventh).

Third seed Bassam Mochariffie (Bu) did not perform to his ranking, winning three matches and finishing eighth on countback with Nicol, who also won three. He beat Nicol in five. In fact the luckless Nicol actually lost in five games thrice (to Mochariffie, Lowe and Yousif), although he did defeat Shah in five.

Shah had beaten team-mate Chernett in five too and Chernett had also missed out in five vs Mochariffie. Lowe beat Shah in five as well.

Seniors

Scott again seeded one again won all of his matches, but again was pushed to five games by second seed, Akash Shah (He), unranked Graham Beaney (Sx-Crawley Sports TTC) and unranked Yu Chim Barry Li (Nd).

There was a two-way countback between Shah and Beaney, who both won six matches out of eight, but since Beaney defeated Shah, it was he who got the silver medal. Shah beat team mate Ashutosh Pant (He) 11-9 in the fifth game. Beaney’s other loss was to third seed, Krevs, by 11-8 in the fifth.

Krevs finished fourth with five wins, but suffered an unexpected loss to Adam Hyde (Ha) 13-11 in the fifth. Pant was fifth with four wins, while Li and Hyde both had three wins, but Li got sixth place, as he beat Hyde.

Lowe, having had a good showing in the vets, didn’t win any matches in the seniors, although had to concede his last match through exhaustion. He did take Krevs and Li to five ends. Hyde had also taken Pant to five.

Final Placings

Veterans: 1 Rory Scott (IRL), 2 Vadym Krevs (UKR), 3 Fawzi Yousif (Sx), 4 Bob Lowe (Sx), 5 Ajay Shah (Sy), 6 Jonathan Chernett (Sy), 7 Chris Pullinger (Sy), 8 Bassam Mocharrifie (Bu), 9 Paul Nicol (E), 10 Alison Jordan (Sx).

Seniors: 1 Rory Scott (IRL), 2 Graham Beaney (Sx), 3 Akash Shah (He), 4 Vadym Krevs (UKR), 5 Ashutosh Pant (He), 6 Yu Chim Barry Li (Nd), 7 Adam Hyde (Ha), 8 Alison Jordan (Sx), 9 Bob Lowe (Sx).