Petworth House Real Tennis Club visits

            Petworth House RTC:
David Bevan-Thomas,      Tom Plant,
                   Martin Paterson,      Oliver Harris
     plus Ian Lambert (in shower)

Petworth visited on Saturday, April 27th for some keenly fought tennis. Petworth’s team are definitely in the ‘senior’ category with one over 80 and two nearly 80, although this year the team included two relatively junior players one of whom has only just retired. This gave the match manager a few more headaches than usual in terms of player matching for the Doubles heavy format. The Pros were their usual help and included several cautionary tales in their pre-team selection briefing. The CURTC team of seasoned (I prefer that term to senior) tennis aficionados proved up to the task and ended up 4-1 winners. Our ad-hoc Doubles teams involving Bernie (Graduate cup finalist) Carpenter, Eric (Green Court, please) Nutter, John (I do remember your father) Howard and myself were well prepared by pre warm-up introductions and proved to be too strong for our opponents especially on the Green Court. On the Blue Court we were gracious enough to let our visitors win the first set as I had the excruciating experience of being made to look utterly inept by the over 80’s precision returns into my forehand corner. Aided by a tactical shift (John served from the other side to give my backhand an outing), we nonetheless scraped home in the 3rd set. Two Singles matches followed the first of which must have tested the patience of all concerned especially the long suffering marker, Peter.

We were approaching one hour over schedule as the match relentlessly ground on to the seemingly inevitable 5-5 in the 3rd set although I did have to save several match points en-route. By this time Guy (Two courts) Kirk had decamped to the Green Court to start playing his Singles. Back on the Blue Court, the score, of course, reached 40 all but I was on serve.. It was not one of my better serves, my opponent went for the Dedans, I got the sweet spot of my racket behind the ball but unfortunately it was too sweet and the ball arced into the roof..

Guy returned to the Blue Court to give a convincing demonstration of winning tennis to complete a straight sets, two court, victory.

Christie Marrian

Four men go to Manchester

Jules and Jimmy in Manchester

Jimmy Campbell led a four-man crew off to his home town of Manchester last weekend. The first match on Friday night was an epic show-down between Jimmy and Jules Camp, which ended up going Jimmy’s way, despite him losing the second set 1-6. Jules was apparently feeling slightly under the weather after travelling to Basel to be disappointed by his football team. Camp pulled himself together for Saturday, however, and earned a good victory against Mark Seymour-Mead 6-4 6-3

Alastair Kwan was up next and decided to play off level against a young Robert Shenkman, whose handicap was 4 points better than him at 26. The first set involved some quality tennis and Kwan just managed to overcome his tenacious opponent 6-5. This broke young Shenkers resolve and Kwan raced through the second 6-0 to seal an impressive victory.

Jimmy then took to the court for a long awaited grudge match against Andrew Mossford. Andrew has recently had some injury problems, meaning he couldn’t give his all on the court and in his own words, ‘probably went for way more balls than I should have done.’ He still put up some good resistance and after 1 hour 15 mins of a real battle, Jimmy managed to come through 6-2 6-3.

Lucas Birrell-Gray was up last against 34 handicap Graham Heap. Another one who fancied a challenge, they decided to play 15 owe 15, meaning Lucas was playing off an effective handicap much lower than the 50 he is on paper. Lucas produced his best ever tennis, looking very assured and solid on court to come through 6-5 6-3.

A thoroughly enjoyable weekend with some great victories. Only let down was the boys bailing on going to the pub in favour of watching the golf!!!

Division 4 v Moreton Morrell

As we near the end of the National League season, teams are looking to secure their place in the semi final and final. A win for the CURTC Division 4 team against Moreton would guarantee a spot in at least the semis, but every point is crucial if the team is to make it through to the final directly, with home court advantage.

The first match on was the number two string singles with captain Jules Camp taking on Moreton’s Tom Bomford. Tom was the victor when these two met previously fixture at Moreton, so revenge was in the air, and Jules raced away with the first set 6/0! The second started in the same manner, with Jules grabbing a 4/1 lead early on, but then he got cramp in his hand (perhaps due to a change in style – Jules was going for many more main wall dedans than usual because they were working well) and he lost the second set 6/5. But the fight was still on and, despite having to resort to serving bobbles, Jules kept going for the attacking shots and closed out the match 6/4 in the last set.

Andrew Petrie was up, next facing Lloyd Pettiford, who is very familiar with the Cambridge Green court. Initially, games were won in turn by each player, but Andrew brought his ‘A-game’ and punished anything loose, rarely hitting the penthouse, and won the first set 6/4. The second was a set of two halves; Lloyd started stronger, racing into a 4/1 lead. The next couple of games were shared and at 5/2 it looked like a third set was on the cards. However Andrew dug deep and clawed his way back into the set. At 5/5 it really could have gone either way, but a couple of volley dedans and attacking nicks from Andrew saw him finish his great comeback and take the match 6/4 6/5.

The final, first string singles saw a rivalry that has developed over recent times and will no doubt continue, as CURTC’s Alex Evans took on Moreton’s captain Tom Lewis (another Moreton player used to the Cambridge courts, having played here in several Inter-University Tournaments). The head-to-head record was in favour of Tom, but with only one handicap point between them, it was always going to be close. The first set saw a very aggressive game from both players, Alex finding the corners of the dedans with accurate forces and Tom’s volley return limiting Alex’s advantage at the service end, but it was Tom who won more of the big points to take a 5/3 lead. But Alex wasn’t giving in and kept getting the ball back until he had a chance to hit a winner. Inevitably, the first set went to 5/5 and deuce, and it was impossible to call who would win the set. Alex kept the faith and sneaked it 6/5. The second was a completely different story; quality tennis but Tom seemed to win all the big points and raced to 6/0. Alex came back hard in the final set, keeping up the pressure and extracting more and more errors from Tom, finally coming through 6/2.

This 3/0 whitewash of Moreton guarantees Cambridge a spot in at least the semi finals, and with one more match to go there is every chance of topping the group and being rewarded with a straight final spot and home court advantage. Watch this space!