Holder at the double
The 25/26 season kicked off at Worthing Table Tennis club on the 16th of August at the club’s first 2 star of the season.
With a record entry of 55 players and a waiting list of over 20 players, show word is getting out about the fantastic, player focused events the club runs.
This year saw the introduction of a practice room and live scoring projected onto the wall.
The day started with the Men’s Singles and Junior Boys events, The junior group stages went as per the seedings other then Jersey’s John Le Fondre coming runner up in group 1 and James Roberts needing 5 sets to overcome Liam Higgings.
John set up a quarter final clash with Harley Guy-Sinclar, which saw John come out as winner and set up a series of all Jersey clashes. The top half of the draw saw Jersey player Theo De Proeck make his way to the final, taking out top seeded Welshman Oilver Jordan in the semis. The other Semi final was an all Jersey clash with Callum Allaway going down to John. The all Jersey final saw a tight match with Theo coming out winner, 3-1.
The Junior plate event saw an all Sussex clash in the final with Liam Higgins overcoming Hoy Wen Leung, With both players needing 5 sets to make the final overcoming Reais Mogul and Josh Kelly respectively.
The men’s singles saw no end of displacements of seeds with some early season rust showing and some summer training paying off for others. Top seed, Harry Yip lost out to Jaydan Griffiths in the group to move to the bottom half of the draw. Group 3 showed what a ticky time of the season it is with a 3 way countback with 3rd seeded Paul Carter losing to Joe Britnell, who then lost to James Black. With just 1 set in it Joe won the group and Paul in second with the remaining seeds making it through unscathed.
The top half of the draw now wide open saw Jozef Krakovsky take out Jaydan Griffiths to reach the semis finals before going down to Joe Britnell, who had beaten 5th seed Mario Iokam in his quarterfinal.
The bottom half with 4 of the top seeds now in it, Saw Harry Yip reach the semi finals, beating Scott Dawtry before going down to 2nd seed Adam Klos, who had overcome Paul Carter over 5 sets. The final saw Adam come out winner in 3 sets.
The plate event was taken home by James Black, having missed out on the main draw on countback he was in fine form, only dropping one set to Angelo Robles in the quarter finals on his way to the title. His Opponent in the final was , who battled his way through “Kent Corner” having to play his team mate Simon Kear, who had beaten there other team mate Ed Matthews.
The junior girls saw another close affair, with the medals being separated by a countback. Lydia Whtye from Kent came out on top just piping Jersey Freya Allaway to gold, with Akshita Subbramanium just losing out in 3rd.
Womens open, had top seeded Holly Holder as favourite and Holly duly delivered beating Sue Pingram 3-0 but needing 4 sets to overcome Polina Shcherbakova who beat Sue in 4 sets to claim Silver.
The Womans open a large group of 6 was much tighter than the finish positions suggests, with only 4 of the games being 3-0. Holy Holder going into the afternoon was again the favorioute and duly delivered winning all her games but one 1 one of them 3-0, runner up was Freya Allaway. Winning all 4 of her other games.
The Mens open unlike the morning saw the seeds all take there assigned positions, but not without a few scares, John McBeath needing to come back from 2 sets down to overcome Tim Surrey, who had just had a 5 setter to beat Vipan Koul and just to finish off the group another 5 setter for Vipan going down to Jaydan Griffiths. Mario Iokam needed 5 sets to beat upcoming Jersey junior Callum Allaway and Joe Britnell also needed 5 sets to beat Mike Lim.
The semi finals saw all 4 top seeds face off, Adam Klos was the first to reach the final beating Scott Dawtry in 3, While the other Semi final saw John Mcbeath beat Paul Carter to set up an all Waterside TTC final.
Drawing on his powers of escapology which he had practiced early in the group, John, once again came back from 2-0 to take the final and the title in a fantastic game. The men’s open final can be viewed on the clubs youtube channel here
The mens plate was won by Mike Lim, beating out Ryan Hobbs in 3 sets, Mike who needed 4 sets to progress past Arslan Shah, while Ryan Hobbs took out Damien Laselles in 5.
As part of rasing the player experience at the event, All the results from the Knockouts can be found in the results booklet, while the club partnered up with Worthing Camera Club, who provided 5 volunteers throughout the day taking hundreds of photos available on the clubs Facebook page.
Worthing Table Tennis Clubs runs a number of national ranking events a full list of events and entry forms can all be found along with other club events at the club website here
