GRAY comfortably accounted for McCallum in the first semi-final in tennis
pennant, but Beveridge had to work very hard before snaring a six game win in
the second match for the day.
Beveridge began with a bang — Matt Witney and
Julie Wardle put together a strong 8-3 victory in the first set, and Damien Mays
and Trevor Rowlands beat Ken Grisdale and Rowan Whitman 8-6 to take the honours
early.
Stuart McGregor and Marcus McCaig, with an 8-5 result against Brett
Pekin and Alan Thompson, kept Curlewis in the hunt.
Colin Free and Trevor
Rowlands boosted the Beveridge lead with a powerful 8-0 win, and Witney and
Thompson lifted it another four games. However McGregor and Darren Hender
produced another fighting effort to beat Pekin and Wardle 8-6, and pulled the
margin back by two.
The final two men’s sets were the most competitive of
the day. Free and Mays had to work for every point before finally edging ahead
of Neil Selleck and Grisdale in a tiebreak. Lachlan Carroll and McGregor
finished the day with a personally satisfying 8-6 win over Witney and Pekin,
leaving Beveridge with a 13 game break.
The women started with two 8-6
results. Hayley Siddons and Olivia Gleeson gave Curlewis a great start with a
win over Narelle Maeder, and birthday girl, Angela Smith, but Beveridge’s Lisa
Pekin and Teagan Mays grabbed the second set from Jayne Mulholland and Jamie
Gorringe.
Gleeson continued to show her best form for the season, winning the
next for Curlewis with Chrissy Hendry, in a terrific 8-3 result.
Beveridge
came back hard, with Smith and Pekin beating Siddons and Mulholland in a
tiebreak, and Sophie Sartori and Mays scoring a very good 8-4 win. Overall the
women scored 33 games apiece, leaving the match margin at 13.
Curlewis
struck early in the mixed, with a strong 8-3 win to Hender and Siddons, and an
even better 8-2 result for McCaig and Gleeson. Grisdale and Mulholland picked up
a hard-fought 8-6 over Damien Mays and Lisa Pekin, which leveled the scores at
101 games each.
Free and Sophie Sartori blasted through the penultimate set
8-3 to put Beveridge back in front, and Chris Hodgson and Teagan Mays finished
the job with a tiebreak win over Whitman and Gorringe to complete a really
excellent semi-final match.
The other semi final was a much more pedestrian
affair.
Gray’s women started the day in outstanding style, and went on to
create an 18 game margin.
Vicki Nalder, who had been under an injury cloud,
partnered Jacqui Brooks to a tough 8-6 win over Angela Best and Karen McKissack,
and the day just got better for Gray with every set that passed.
Lucy Martin
and Pauline Halligan won 8-2, Brooks and Ellen Roberts scored 8-3, Nalder and
Margin took out another 8-3, and Roberts and Halligan finished the women’s sets
with a handy 8-4 result, as the Gray side made a clean sweep of the five sets on
offer.
The men had a much tougher contest, with McCallum claiming the
narrowest of one game margins.
McCallum got away to a sensational start, with
Darren Wardle and Glen McKissack beating Barry Dow and Gene Brooks 8-6. Max
Carroll and substitute Craig Roberts won 8-5 from Chris Nalder and Andrew
Sartori, and Tony Evans and Tim Croft scored another 8-5, beating Vaughn Catton
and Darryl Roberts.
Bruce McDowall and Croft battled to a tiebreak win over
Derek MacFarlane and Roberts, before Gray won its first set through Dow and
Sartori, who took out a hot 8-2 win. McCallum bounced back, for Carroll and
McKissack to grab a good 8-4 victory.
Gray steadied in the last two of the
men’s sets, with MacFarlane and Catton winning 8-4, and Dow and Nalder working
hard to get home 8-6 from Wardle and Carroll.
Going into the mixed, Gray held
a 17 game lead.
McCallum started the mixed well, with Glen McKissack and Best
taking three games off the Gray margin, but Sartori and Vicki Nalder were too
strong in the next, giving Gray an 8-3 victory. Catton and Martin, and
MacFarlane and Ellen Roberts stretched the lead out again, going to 24 games in
front. In a final defiant effort, Croft and Julie Croton won 8-1 for McCallum,
but any chance had long gone by that stage of the match.
Next week’s grand
final will feature Gray, which spent a great deal of the season on top of the
ladder, and Beveridge, which finished the year in excellent form.
