GUY'S RECORD RUN ENDED BY THE STROKE OF A PENN

Published 05/06/2018 at 09:14:10 by David Wackrill; edited 3 times, last on 05/06/2018 at 10:26:26 by David Wackrill.

MONDAY NIGHT SUMMER LEAGUE WEEK 3 ROUND-UP
 

DIV 1
 

Results: Topspin 4 HowSmall 1,  Spinners 4 Stormers 1,  Ijebu Warriors 5 Sweet N Sour 0. 
 

Table: 1st Topspin (11 pts), 2nd Howsmall (10), Spinners (10), 4th Ijebu Warriors (8),  5th Sweet N Sour (3), Stormers (3)
 

A sensational performance from Russell Penn tonight against main rivals HowSmall lifted his Topspin team to the top of the table after a superb 4-1 victory. And the ‘set that got away’ was only at deuce in the 7th after another sterling show from team-mate Mal Hussain, a shock semi-finalist in the recent Shaw League tournament. Russell ended Guy Sparrow’s run of 21 consecutive wins in MK League (16 Winter, 5 Summer) with his fast counter-hitting style. A blank here for Matt Horrocks and just the one this time for Guy.
 

Spinners triumphed 4-1 against my Stormers side with another double from Alan Cherry and a good win for Pete Tillotson, his first of the Summer, over Andy Smith. Pete ran Andy ragged with his heavy looping and commented afterwards that the only other occasion he’d beaten Andy (in 30 years) was when the Stormer was suffering from a heavy cold! Andy has a tenuous claim to fame though in being the only player to have beaten Russell so far this Summer.
 

A pretty straightforward 5-0 thrashing by Ijebu Warriors over Sweet N Sour. Julie Snowdon and Terry Lau never came close to taking a set from Ricky Taiwo and Jordi Armat Foraster, who maintain their 4th place.
 

Player of the week is Russell Penn.


 

DIV 2 (courtesy of Mike Ainsworth)
 

Hit n Hope 3 Swifts 2
Classics 4 Blades 1
Towcester 0 Phoenix
 

It was all change at the top of division 2 of the Summer League this week as neither Iain Lindsay nor Ian Brown were available for Towcester who therefore called on the services of two of Northamptonshire’s stalwarts in Tony Woodward and Paul Nichols. 
 

Opponents Phoenix were themselves without star man Constantin but fortunately for them were able to call on Alan Bolding and it was Alan who started off with a hard fought 4-3 win against the highly ranked Tony Woodward. 
 

From then on everything went the way of the Milton Keynes based players as first Gerald Ridgway saw off Paul Nichols and then the doubles was won by 4 games to 2. 
 

Next up and in undoubtedly the result of the evening Gerald impressively beat Tony by 4 games to nil and then Alan beat Paul by the same score.
 

As a result Phoenix leapfrog Towcester into pole position at the top of the league and with matches against Blades and Swifts must now fancy their chances of promotion to the top tier after the first round of matches.
 

At the other end of the table Classics recovered from two defeats in their first two matches to hand a 4-1 thrashing to Blades and so move above Blades who now sit of at the bottom of the table, albeit that only two points separate the bottom four teams. Bill Tyler scored Blades’ only point, edging out Barbara Peters in seven. Nick Markham was unbeaten for Classics and Mark Thomas failed to score in two hard fought matches for Blades.
 

Meanwhile Hit n Hope welcomed a tanned and relaxed looking Tony Coomber back from (yet another!) holiday and he helped his team to a narrow 3-2 win against Swifts by playing a part in what proved to be the decisive doubles win against Sue Lewis and Mo Duncan. Tony narrowly failed to beat Mo and Sue in the singles matches but fortunately Ivor Howard managed another two singles wins for Hit n Hope.
 

Player of the evening: Gerald Ridgway.
 

Week 3 Table 

Phoenix      14
Towcester    10
Swifts        6
Hit 'N Hope    6
Classics       5
Blades    4