Welcome to the 2024 Tournament and Match Reports. We hope you have great fun participating, watching, and reading about it afterwards!
In the first two days of the tournament, there has been decent progress in the Men’s Singles – the event with the largest entry and the most rounds, and the most tricky to keep on schedule. 4 matches were played and one walkover was granted.
Andrei Cristescu has had to withdraw, as he had to go away, to give J P Doumeng a walkover.
Ashish Nair took on the 8th seed David Hirst. Apparently the main differences were that David served rather better, and also kept his cool to wait patiently for an chance to win the point, rather than going for it and making errors. David won 6-1 6-2.
Gideon Stone took on the 6th seed Philip Reid whom I have observed practising assiduously with his brother Marc, in the run up to the tournament. I have no direct reports, but this was a second 6-1 6-2 victory to a seed.
Paul O’Flynn and Henry Lloyd-Hughes had a closer battle. I don’t know anything about Henry’s game. But Paul clearly took this match very seriously because he had a lesson with Michal immediately preceding it. Paul has a big serve, and likes to welly the ball at every opportunity, but this makes him somewhat prone to unforced errors. It sounds like he struggled in the first set, with Henry winning it 6-1. But the second set was an altogether closer affair – Paul possibly took a more measured and effective approach? It went to a set tie break, narrowly taken by Henry for a 6-1 7-68-6 victory.
Luca Fioretti played Peter Davies (me). Luca is a tricky left-handed player, with a variety of serves – heavy leftie slice, some top slice, and an excellent double handed (leftie) backhand from which he often hits winners if given a ball within his hitting zone. He is also pretty quick about the court, as am I, though some of that is anticipation. But he had not played on grass recently.
Although I served reasonably well, it took some time to get used to the Luca’s leftie game, and I rapidly found myself 1-4 down. However, it then became more obvious what to do, and I pulled it back to 5-4. At this point Luca seemed to get more of a feel for the grass, and stepped up his service pace. I hit some winners, but missed a few more under pressure from slice and swerve on some well placed shots, and couldn’t seem to get any more easy winners off the serve. The net result was that Luca reeled off 8 straight games in a row to take the match 7-6 6-0.
No photos yet!
