Cippenham Five by Two Senior & Junior 1-Star Open Championships (15.1.11)

Cippenham’s Robert Hansell came close to winning the Senior Singles title at the Cippenham Five by Two Senior and Junior 1-Star Open Championships on 15th January. The top seed won his preliminary stage group with the loss of only two games and then survived tussles with Zayd Mauthoor, Robert Nilsson and Jojo Senorin. The encounter with Mauthoor was a three-straight affair but Hansell needed to recover from losing the first two games before eventually getting the better of Nilsson in the quarter-final.  Then, in the semi-final against Senorin, he again lost the first game of the match before winning the fourth convincingly to set up a final encounter with second seed Neil Wright.

Wright also had a tough semi-final, coming back from two games down and then winning the third only at deuce as he overcame fellow Welshman Dean Cundy. His quarter-final had been more straight-forward, 3-0 against Cippenham’s Tony Stead while his last sixteen match had resulted in a close 3-1 win over Martin Gunn.

Earlier on, Simon Dilkes had survived a close five-game encounter with local Eddie Mitchell but then lost out, also in five games, to Senorin in the quarter-final.

The earlier Junior Singles, played in the morning, had resulted in victory for Surrey’s George Heath who beat Erisa Kamara in the final. Semi-finalists were Moshood Awosile, who lost 3-1 to Heath, and Oliver Hack, who lost also 3-1 to Kamara.

Organiser Steve Smith presided over a tournament that attracted a full house 45 entries for the senior event but only 15 for the junior event.

Results:

Winner: Runner-up:
Senior Singles Neil Wright (WAL) Robert Hansell (Bu)
Senior Consolation David Randall (Ha) Anna Labuz (WAL)
Junior Singles George Heath (Sy) Enisa Kamara (Sy)
Junior Consolation Yinka Falana (Sy) Leo Long (Bk)