With only one match of the season left the Topspin trio of Russell Penn, Mervyn Kelly and myself have remained unchanged throughout while the only other player in this Division to have made all the matches is Greenleys Warriors' Ricky Taiwo. We've been near the top all year, however a disappointing defeat to lowly Data tonight must surely have seen the end to our promotion prospects, especially as rivals Van Hire and Pumas both have Chackmore Hasbeens to play.
 

This match opened with the fortunes in the first 3 sets swaying to and fro as they all went to a deciding game. I went down to a rampant James Molloy, Mervyn lost a tight set to Dave McGarragh after holding several match points and Russell went from winning the opening 2 games against Rob Mungham 2 & 3 to trailing 0-2 in the decider before reversing the decline to put our first point of the night on the board. Then we took the doubles in straight games to square the match at 2-2 (that's 6 doubles wins running now).
 

But it all went downhill after that with both Mervyn and Russell failing to win another set, all lost in 3 or 4 games. Russell was on a best of season run of 5 wins in a row when he faced Dave, but couldn’t stop him getting in with his favourite forehand hits, and Mervyn got tangled up in Rob’s defensive web to give the Data man his first win since November. Meanwhile the imperious James ploughed on to extend his own current run to 12, and he already has a magnificent 17 set winning streak behind him from the autumn. Congratulations to Data and see you next season.