Warsash blow ladies title race wide open – Portsmouth Winter Tennis League round-up

Fielding their strongest team of the season, Warsash blew the ladies Division 1 title race wide open when they eased past current leaders, Avenue 4-0. And with Chichester edging out Lee 3-1, that leaves these four teams separated by just three points!

CourtX men’s 4th have suffered more than most from the weather - their match with Lee 4ths was just their second of the season. Ssecond pair Tim Fielder and Ozzy Glogic made light of their lack of competitive action to secure two match tie break wins to help them secure a 4-0 win.

One division down, Fishbourne were also playing just their second match of the season, a 4-0 win over Alverstoke leaving them well placed to challenge for promotion.

Most of the weekend action was in the mixed competition. Division 2 saw Ventnor and Lee 2nds both record their third successive wins, against Active Academy and Chichester respectively, while stragglers CourtX 2nds and Warsash 2nds shared the rubbers, CourtX taking the extra winning draw point 5-4 on sets.

Alverstoke travelled to Southsea and surprised the leaders by beating them 4-0, joining them at the top as a result.

Wins for Chichester 2 (3-1 against Southsea 2nds) and Fishbourne (3-1 at Wickham) moved them both into the promotion positions in Division 4.

The other two matches in that division both finished with the rubbers shared 2-2, Alverstoke 2nds going on the take the winning draw points by 6 sets to 4 against Warsash. Lee 3rds pair Alwyn Lewis and Dot Wallis lost both their rubbers in the match with Rowlands Castle, but by taking a set in each they enabled their side to claim the winning draw points.

Having dropped points with a losing draw against Chichester early in the season, and then suffered a series of postponements, Avenue’s midweek ladies masters have now won four in a row. They played two matches in a week, beating Denmead and Wellow with identical 4-0 scores.

Also in the top flight,, CourtX got their season back on track with a 4-0 win at home to Swanmore.

In the second tier Lee notched up a fifth successive win when beating Warsash 2nds, while Fishbourne dented Rowlands Castle’s promotion hopes when they shared the rubbers 2-2 and took the winning draw points by just two games.

Lee’s 4-0 win over Wellow in the men’s masters wraps up the divisional title - the only challenge left for them now is to see if they can go through the season unbeaten, having won seven out of seven so far.

Let off of the week came from Warsash men’s masters team. They shared the opening rubbers with Swanmore, but took a two-game advantage into the reverse rubbers.

Swanmore then won the 1v1s rubber, but at the same time Warsash’s Michael Isaacs and David Marsh had won the first set against Swanmore’s second pair 6-1. A 6-4 second set win would give them the winning draw points, but having established a 2-0 lead they lost six games in a row.

No longer able to win the match, they would have claimed a point had they won the tie break. They held FOUR match points during the tie break, but couldn’t convert any of them!