Portsmouth & District Tennis League: Chichester pip Warsash to claim first men's championship

The key elements of the picture are who wins the men’s and ladies’ top divisions and goes on to represent Portsmouth in the annual Solent Cup competition against the Southampton equivalents.

The ladies’ winners will not be decided for another week or so, but the overall picture became much clearer after the much-anticipated clash between Chichester and Warsash for the men’s title proved to be as close and exciting as expected.

The opening rubbers went against normal expectation, with the second pairs in both teams beating the top pairs, so there was just one game between the teams at the halfway stage.

Warsash’s Ian Udal and Mat Pond then comfortably took the first set off James Bird and Charlie Guimaraeans, while on the adjacent court, Andy Herrod-Taylor and Alex Petrella fought for an hour in the first set before losing the tie-break to Chichester’s Joe Glover and Nigel Jones.

Bird and Guimaraeans hit back to take the second set off Udal and Pond. The Warsash pair recovered to take the match tie-break but the set lost meant that Herrod-Taylor and Petrella now had to win the second set to keep Warsash in the match.

They broke serve to lead 5-4 and served for the set, but in a marathon game with several deuces, Chichester broke back to level at 5-5. With no further service breaks, Glover and Jones repeated their first set tie-break win to level the rubbers at 2-2 and give Chichester the winning draw, by five sets to four, and with it their first Portsmouth league men’s championship.

The ladies’ division one title will go down to the wire after leading contenders Lee 1 and Avenue 1 met in one of the rare matches where the losing team actually won more games than the winners!

Avenue’s second pair, Gill Clarke and Jenny Smith, started in sparkling form, demolishing Gill Wallis and Kate Russell 6-0, 6-3.

They began their reverse rubber, against Fiona Dubber and Cia Lakey, in much the same style, taking the first set 6-0. But then the wheels fell off as Dubber and Lakey won the second set 7-5 and went on to win the match tie-break.

And with both the other rubbers going to match tie-breaks, both won by Lee, they took all three points to give themselves the chance of a late run through to win the title.

Back to men’s division one, Ventnor all but secured their place in the top division next season with a 4-0 victory against relegation rivals Ryde Lawn 1, while in division two, Lee 2’s 4-0 win over Alverstoke was enough to secure promotion to the top tier, but probably not enough to give them the title.

Chichester 3 had already sealed the division three title before their win over Lee 4, while CourtX 4 won the ‘bragging rights’ battle with club colleagues CourtX 3, whose captain was heard to say that he thought the wind was much stronger for his team than for the opponents!

The ladies’ division two title will be decided by this weekend’s match between CourtX 1 and Ryde Lawn 2. The latter need only a losing draw to clinch the title so CourtX will need to win three rubbers to wrest the title from Ryde’s grasp.

Lee 3’s 3-1 over Abshot secured them the ladies 5, killing Alverstoke’s faint hopes, although their similar 3-1 win over Denmead ensured promotion for next winter.

Avenue 2 leapfrogged into second place, ahead of Lee 2, after their 3-1 win in mixed division two, with Rowan Smithson and Helen Watson winning both their rubbers for Avenue, backed up by Andy Gilliatt and Emma Boucher’s win over Martin Doyle and Patsy Scarborough.

The relegation clash between CourtX and Lee in midweek mixed masters one ended with the rubbers shared 2-2 but Lee edged the winning draw, by five sets to four, courtesy of the set won by Trevor Grant and Steph Evans in their losing rubbers against Dawn Dewilde and Rod Bailey.

But neither team could lift themselves out of the relegation places as Wellow saw off Avenue 1 by four rubbers to none.