TENNIS: Championship Final Turns on Broken String
HUGH SULLIVAN
Final handshake: Soucek in blue, Preece in red
The Amherst Club held its annual club championships this month under a change of format which produced high quality play, high levels of popular support amongst both participants and spectators and, on the final day, high drama.
In previous years the tournament has been scheduled to run over many weeks, with competition organised in a variety of overlapping age ranges and earlier rounds often interrupted by holidays or other absences. This time, under the pro-active direction of leading club players Nikki Crowhurst and Dylan Preece, all matches were shoe-horned into two weeks of evening and weekend play, with veteran events postponed to a later date. Assisted by fine weather for most of the fortnight, an impressive number of contestants battled through several knock-out rounds to establish five finals – men’s and women’s singles; men’s, women’s and mixed doubles. These were played before a large gathering of club members last Saturday (an open bar and a free tea of sandwiches and cakes being further inducements).
Victrix ludorum was Anita Pearce, a relative newcomer to the club, who beat Crowhurst unceremoniously 6-1, 6-3 in the women’s final. She teamed up with Barbara Fentiman to win the women’s doubles in a third set tie-break against Crowhurst and Jane Garrett; and also with her brother Jeff Gedge to win the mixed doubles against Jack Watson and Karen Cunnington.
Men’s final
The men’s singles final was a tense repeat of last year’s contest. The finalists, Preece and Quentin Soucek, were both happy to slug it out from the baseline, neither gaining much advantage from their respective serves nor risking more than the occasional foray to the net. Volleys, lobs, drop shots? Not if either could help it. Soucek favours a topspin forehand that looks effortless and seems almost error-proof in its control; he preferred to stand behind the left-hand baseline to use it. That tended to leave a gap to his right which Preece aimed to exploit with his own flatter shots from either wing, particularly a brutal cross-court forehand that forced many winners.
Preece took the first set 6-4, Soucek the second 6-2, setting up a championship tie-break (first to ten points) to determine the outcome.
Soucek took an 8-5 lead in this, then lost two points on Preece’s serve, but won the next on his own to reach match point with another serve to come at 9-7.
However, Preece had broken a string of his racket in the previous action, and he needed a replacement. He kept Soucek waiting for the best part of two minutes, taking out two alternative rackets from his equipment bag, trying them out, asking his opponent to hit him a ball to test one, then choosing the other, generally spinning out time. A mental test for both players, one might say. And when play resumed, it was clear who had passed it – Soucek served a limp double fault, made an error on Preece’s next serve to tie the score at 9-9, and made two more errors on the next two points, to hand his opponent the victory.
In the aftermath, the protagonists were mutually gracious – as they had to be, since they were almost immediately teaming up together to contest the final of the men’s doubles. Their opponents were a formidable pairing– coach Joe Adams and his teenage protégé George Moon. The previous two-hour battle in the heat of the afternoon, as well perhaps as the drama of its ending, took its toll. Adams and Moon won in straight sets.
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