There were six matches played today and one walkover. Winning margins tended not to be as overwhelming as yesterday
In the first Men’s Doubles, Luca Fioretti & Bernardo Pistorelli played Yannick Tandy & Bruce Rigal. Luca can be a very tricky leftie player, and hits a lot with his partner Bernardo. Meanwhile, Bruce Rigal’s suggested strategy for winning doubles match is to play with a good partner. In this particular case, Sultan likely set up the partnership. Yannick does not play for West Heath, but also is a member at Paddington, probably playing for a team there.
Bruce was hitting consistently, but mostly leaving Yannick to hit the winners, which worked well. Luca and Bernardo won a couple of games in each set, but could not avoid being on the wrong end of some services breaks. Yannick & Bruce won 6-2 6-2.
Interestingly, Bruce has now set himself up for a father/son clash with Joe Rigal & Olly Turner, the third seeds, in the quarter finals.
In the second Men’s Doubles, Dan Dalton & Matt Wasser played the 4th seeds Sultan Gangji & Richard Keep. Matt, a leftie, plays pretty regularly and has certainly improved over time. Dan has to fit tennis around his children. However, Sultan and Richard are an established first team pair.
Exactly the same fixture occurred in the first round of the 2025 Men’s Doubles. I’ll keep you in suspense as to the result.
In the first set, Sultan and Richard were just too much for Dan and Matt to get any traction in terms of games. In the second set they managed a couple, for a 6-0 6-2 victory to Richard & Sultan.
And in 2025? Richard and Sultan won 6-0 6-3. But Dan and Matt should probably put this down to random luck, not a widening gulf. But yet …
… examining the photo in a little detail, one might wonder whether Sultan might derive additional power and better timing from using a larger racket than most, and that this might account for the larger victory margin this year.
Of course, he is not the only person to consider this route, though some might find it an unwieldy choice, if taken too far. Double handed serve, anyone?
Also in the MD Greg Meyer & Alan Braier gave a walkover to Greg Lim & James Li-Tremble.
In the first of three Mixed matches, Bruce Rigal & Kaya Widuch played Matt Wasser & Sophia Melas. This time wasn’t so lucky for Bruce, because Matt and Sophia beat them 6-3 6-1.
In the second mixed match, Dan Angel & Margaux Valarche took on the former (2021 plus other previous years) champions Greg Lim & Marjan Denis. Margaux also won the 2023 Mixed event with Jasper Tresidder.
Dan and Margaux are consistent, mobile and very tactically aware, while Greg and Marjan are more experienced, and Greg is harder hitting, but prone to more errors.
In the first set, Greg & Marjan earned a service break to go 5-3 up, but then Greg was broken and the pair lost the resulting tie break. But in the second set, Margaux and Dan got the upper hand, retaining serve (under some pressure) and managing to break twice, winning the match 7-6 6-2.
In the last mixed doubles, Elena Valarche & Joshua Woodyard were playing Richard Keep & Molly Hiebert.
Elena is a demon at the net and aims to get up to it as fast as possible in most points, especially on grass. Joshua has a good serve and can hit heavy groundstrokes, but can’t necessarily maintain consistency on them indefinitely.
Molly seems to have developed into a decent all round doubles player over the past couple of years or so, though did do tennis at college. She hit the ball reasonably hard, didn’t make many mistakes, and didn’t lack tactical nous. Richard is the “acting” club coach – with Olly Turner standing in when Richard has jobs as an actual actor. Richard is a strong “leftie” first team player with a very heavy leftie serve and a good all round game.
It turns out that this was the first time Molly and Richard (who are partners) had played together on the same side of the net. Although Molly was easily holding her own, when she was at the net, Richard did keep poaching from the back of the court, to try to hit outright winners. I didn’t keep a tally of each, but there were poached winners which Richard made, shots which Richard tried to poached only to put out, shots where Molly quite rightly decided she was not going to let him poach her shot, and at least one I can remember where Richard failed to make the winner though keeping his shot in, but was out of position, enabling the opponents to hit a winner into the wide open space he had just left. There was also one occasion when Richard, at the net with Molly on the baseline, tried, but couldn’t reach the lob, but, in making the attempt, put Molly off running to cover the ball behind him. The moral of the tale is that Richard has to trust Molly to hit her shots, which she is quite capable of doing. It is even more important because Molly is improving as she plays more.
Having said all this, Elena and Joshua played well, and the match wasn’t totally one sided. The first set went 6-3 to Richard and Molly, who also took the second set for a 6-3 6-2 victory.
The last match of the day was a singles between Dan Angel and Kerry Karageorgis. This started on grass court 3, but was always going to be kicked off to a hard court by the Ladies’ first team match which started at 6:30 pm. In the end this happened after playing two games of the second set.
Dan is very consistent, fast, and a good all rounder, having played a lot of singles with Margaux Valarche. In the 2025 Tournament, he took out the hard hitting Joe Rigal, the seventh seed, 6-1 6-2, so is a dangerous opponent. Kerry is a leftie, plays frequently and, when on form and fit, doesn’t make many mistakes and can hit some heavy shots.
Dan’s approach was to hit around 3/4 length balls, not to give Kerry too much pace to return, a good angle, or an easy opportunity to approach the net. Kerry made more mistakes when he tried to generate his own pace, and the rallies were generally pretty long, especially when the match moved to the hard court. My suggestion to Kerry would have been to try a few volleys from outside the service box on one or two deeper balls, to shorten Dan’s time to respond and take him out of his comfort zone – which would have worked better on the grass than the hard.
Dan succeeded in frustrating Kerry, who made sufficient mistakes to allow Dan to take the first set 6-3.
Once it moved to the hard court, it looked as if the match was going to go on all night, though it finished before 7 pm. Dan also took the second set to win 6-3 6-2.
Dan faces Greg Lim next, the fourth seed. Dan says he will be changing his strategy against Greg.
