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The last match of the season was against Ivybridge. The original date was rained off. Ivybridge have an indoor option – provided the courts can be booked – and so a week later we managed to complete our season.

With one match to go it was very close at the top of division four. It was just possible for us to win. Or be second or third. Just before we played, our contact at Tavistock (perhaps with a hint of smugness, maybe), told us they had scored 67 points in their last match. Well, that meant we needed 70 points against Ivybridge. This was too much to expect.

We did win however, score 44 Ivybridge 50 Plymstock.

This one happened on the 14th July.

The team was again playing without our strongest player and so the result 48-46 is very credible.

At the time of writing, and with a rather out of date league table as our only guide, it looks like Hill Lane B are very likely to win the mens division four. Also, possibly, we might have a shot at being second. So it was a very impressive victory and continues the mens fine run of results.

The points tally was 56 for Plymstock and 42 for Hill Lane.

Friday was still hot and sunny in the evening. St Budeaux’s courts are arranged such that a setting summer sun is a problem at one end. This problem eventually went away because the matches lasted into the night. Fairly dark by the end at about 9:30pm.

All our matches lasted a while, partly because of long games and also tie breaks. In the number one pairing, first tie, Tim and Phil lost the first set, then took the second set to a tie breaker that they won, followed by a third set tie breaker that they also one. In the second pairing, Steve and Dave lost the first set, easily one the second, then eventually won the third set tie breaker.

As with ourselves, there wasn’t a lot of difference in standard between St Budeaux pairings, so the second matches were also close. Steve and Dave went to tie break twice, eventually winning both, possibly because of a better guessing where the ball was in the dark.

Tim and Phil had a slightly easier time of it second time. The end result was 67 points to Plymstock and 34 to St Budeaux. (Which is not what it says on the scorecard, but I’ve added it up again, and sent an email pointing out our mistake.)

This match was played on Wednesday 14th, rescheduled from the 5th.

On the most recent league table for division four, Tavistock C are third and Plymstock are 4th, out of six. So this one is part of a battle to be in the top half of the table. Tavistock won the encounter when we played them at home. Hence it was very satisfying to sneak a victory away.

The points were Tavistock 43, Plymstock 55.

The ladies played without Jess in the side for the first time. They totalled 16 points, which was not a bad achievement.

The tie was away to Hill Lane B on 2nd July

Great games with more deuces than I can remember – Jess

The points tally : Plymstock 59, Hill Lane 33

We put out one of our stronger sides today against St Melion, who have one of the smaller pools of players to draw upon. We duly got the result. For the first time the men achieved maximum points by winning every set. This is not to suggest that any given game or point was easy. There were some very long rallies.

Below is a picture of Dave and Chris (somewhat hidden by Dave) in action.

The points: Plymstock 72, St Mellion 13.

Tim, Jess, Chris and Nicky played their second round of the P&D mixed doubles knockout match against Looe at home. We lost the match overall 6 sets to 2.