IT was another full house for our penultimate junior Open Tournament at BATTS this season. Possibly our strongest field so far, and it was nice to hear comments comparing our events to four stars. But we always manage to include players who have less experience and who stand to gain so much from watching and playing against skilled opponents. Despite many close matches in the group stage we may have set another record in reaching the semi-finals of the knockouts well before our normal deadline for finishing.

The parents of our competitors are the unsung heroes, and on this occasion they performed magnificently. Not just ensuring that the players arrived punctually, but also for being so helpful during the day in all sorts of ways, and taking an interest in what was going on. All my fellow coaches will agree with me that unless parents take an interest there is little chance that a player will achieve his or her potential in the sport.

A huge contribution in the smooth running of our tournament was down to the skill of our referee Linda Radford, who proved to me that there is still more scope to improve and automate the administration of the tournament. Thanks also to James Pettigrew, our qualified umpire for appearing again at BATTS when he is so busy with many other events around the country. 

With the top 8 seeds ranked in the top 50 in England the standard of play in Band One was a sheer delight. Those 8 all made it through to the QF as expected, but Caleb Tsang (eBatt), still only 12, gave our number six seed Chris Darby (Luton) a tough time, losing in four sets, three of which went to deuce. In the final our top seed Kai Lun Chow defeated the second seeded Harrison Hill.

We didn’t quite have enough girls to allow us to run a separate event for them, but the six girls in the line up performed very well and three of them made it through to Band 2. There were some outstanding performances in Band 2. Bradley Prosser (BATTS), having reached his first BATTS final in our U13 in February, he now repeated that feat, but in the higher age group yesterday. In a hard-fought final, Oliver Chen (Moberly) emerged the winner. Another excellent performance in Band 2 was that of Toby Snook (Yeovil) who defeated a much higher-ranked opponent to reach the SF.

The Band 3 final was between Albert Zhang (Paragon Cambridge) and Dilan Patel (Ellenborough). Although Albert won the match, Dilan’s performance in the tournament was outstanding. He’d only made it into the tournament about an hour before the start, replacing a late cancellation. Playing in a strong group, and with very little prior experience of tournaments he gave immediate notice that he was not going to be overawed by the event, taking games from much higher-ranked opponents. Then, in the knockout he maintained his determination with unexpected wins against two more players to reach the final.