Author: admin

The AGM for 2024 will take place on Friday March 7th at 7pm in the Clubhouse. We have chosen Friday so that members who play in the winter league are able to attend. It will last no more than one and a half hours. Feel free to bring a drink with you, alcoholic or otherwise. Nibbles will be provided.

There are big changes this year and therefore the committee will need members to show a commitment to help with the running of the club and ensure its future. It is vital that as many members as possible attend in order that we establish that members are willing to support us.

Agenda to folow. Watch this space.

Saturday 9th December 7pm to 10pm (ish)

Venue : the club house

£10 per person. Reserve your place by paying Jess.

The day started with a review of the fairly complicated rules. For example, red group and blue group players, blue group players each serve once and then all change ends. Red group players serve once and then people swap partners. Then repeat with new pairings. Everyone scores their individual game wins. Two pools of players for play a round robin and the winning red and blue players from each pool play in the final.

Here is a picture of one of the games. It is not so much mixed doubles as unisex doubles. In the picture below Vicky and Doug are facing Paul and Martin.

The way the scores should work is that, for each match, the total scores of both red group players adds up to 8 and likewise for the blue group.

From the scorebooad picture – below – I think I can see a couple of times when this was not quite perfectly counted and recorded.

Lets hope at least the correct finalists were identified. They were James Driscoll and Steve Maller from the blues and Paul Thompson and Pete Brownlow from the reds.

Given that your correspondant was playing you can guess that nobody thought to take a picture of the final. Oh Well. Below is a picture of the crowd at some point in the afternoon showing quite a good turnout. I think we can say that the club social scene is working well

For the record, the winners of the Roy Gibbs tournament for 2023 were Steve Maller and Pete Brownlow.

With less light in the evening the Wednesday club session will now start at 1:30pm

The weather forecast for Sunday 17th December was for heavy rain and thunder. When the day arrived it turned out the forecast was totally correct. People were asked to come to the club anyway, if only to discuss when the matches could be rescheduled, which they dutifully did. One very good thing to note is that our newly resurfaced courts drain very quickly. No puddles. At some point in the afternoon, people felt it was better to try and get a couple of matches underway. Not that it had stopped raining but some of the ladies were suggesting that people were made of stronger stuff in the winter league.

Here’s the mens doubles match in the rain

..and here are the ladies playing, to say the least, under a cloud.

Mens Doubles

This match was between Dave Bate and Pete Brownlow vs Mark Skerton and Adam Clynch. Dave and Pete won the first set and had match points just as the rain was really hammering down. However Mark and Adam didn’t buckle merely for the chance to dry off and won the second set on a tie break. The match was settled in a champions tie break. Score 7-5 6-7 10-5.

Ladies Doubles

This was between Margie Johnson and Vicky Roberts vs Nicky Slight and Jane Williams. The result was a win for Margie and Vicky : 6-4 6-3

Watching from inside a dry club house with food !

So the finals day was underway and we were relieved to have finished some of the matches. The plan was then to have the mixed doubles. Given the need to get a move on, Dave Bate and Steve decided they could play the mens singles finals in parallel. There was a problem that Dave was soaked through and wanted a change of gear. Fortunately he lives near the club and, after a slight delay where his opponent, who is also the match secretary wondered if he could be disqualified, Dave returned and he and Steve took to the court.

Mixed Doubles

This was between Jess Randell and Dave Williams vs Nicky Slight and Brian Morgan. Your correspondant was playing in the mens final and nobody thought to take a picture of the mixed doubles action. Jess and Dave won 6-1 6-4

Mens Singles

Again, no pictures ! This was between Dave Bate and Steve Maller. Often the mens singles final is somewhat one sided but this year the first two sets were shared and the decider, a 10 point tie break, was also close. The score, Dave won : 3-6 6-3 11-9

Ladies Singles

The players were the same as last year, Nicky Slight and Jess Randell. It was a closer game than last year and much closer than the score suggests. Score Jess won 6-1 6-2

Prizes !

The cups for the doubles events had run out of space for engraving, so we have bought some new ones for this year. Dave B was called to work ! Hence he was hastily given a cup for his part in the mens doubles and for the mens singles. Rather informal and then he had to run. In a more calm manner here is Dave’s partner, Pete, receiving his mens doubles cup.

And, below, the ladies, Margie and Vicky …

The camera never lies. We must have had a little bit of blue sky, late in the day

And Jess (also winner of the ladies singles) with Dave her partner in the mixed.

This tournament is in honour of a Plymstock member who died on court whilst playing for the club. The format is round-robin mixed doubles with a slight twist. The twist is that you play with your partner and then swap so you play against your regular partner. Pairings will be chosen to, as far as possible, even up the strengths of the pairs. The games won by each individual player are then scored.

The competition will be held on the afternoon of Sunday 15th October…weather permitting.

The nature of the competition is that all entrants have to play a lot of games and the number of entrants very much affects how many games and how long this would take. Based on previous experience the limit on number of entrants is 16. If you wish to play, please electronically contact the match secretary. Email is preferred as it is easier to keep track. The club WhatsApp forum is OK, as is a text.

*Update*…entries complete.

Here is a report (with a couple of pictures) from last year. Note that there are two winners and each gets a trophy !

Good luck !

Overview

The men started well and had a chance of finishing top of the table, especially after a surprise win against Devonshire B. These hopes took a bit of a knock after an evenly scored tie away to Saltash and also after revenge by Devonshire. Despite a strong finish we couldn’t regain top spot, however were well clear in second.

The ladies had a chance of finishing second by the last game of the season. It wasn’t that easy, since the run-away leaders were our last fixture. In the end three teams ended up very close for 2nd, 3rd and 4th place, but Plymstock were in forth.

The men were in division 4 and the ladies in division 5.

Promotion is guaranteed for first place and possible for second. We will not find out if second place gets promoted until about March when the P and D AGM happens.

The full league tables for all divisions can be seen in this PDF file (Opens in a new window.)

The week by week results and write-ups are as follows :

Mens

Players – Tim Randell (TR), Dave Bate (DB), Steve Maller (SM), Mark Skerton (MS), Chris King (CK), Dave Roberts (DR), JM (Jack Morgan)

Day	Date	Fixture		Players	PTLC Points	Opp’n Points
Monday	May 1st	Saltash A	Home	TR MS DB SM	64	29
Tuesday	May 9th	Devonshire B	Away	TR DB CK MS	51	44
Monday	May 15th	Ivybridge C	Home	DB CK TR MS	63	33
Monday	May 22nd	Newton and Noss B	Home	DB CK TR MS	72	13
Monday	June 5th	Tavistock C	Away	TR SM DB MS	69	25
Monday	June 12th	Saltash A	Away	CK SM DB MS	48	45
Monday	June 26th	Devonshire B	Home	TR DB MS DR	37	53
Thursday	July 6th	Ivybridge C	Away	TR MS SM DR	53	37
Tuesday	July 18th	Newton and Noss B	Away	DB CK TR JM	72	20
Monday	July 24th	Tavistock C	Home	TR SM DB MS	70	26

Ladies

Players – Jess Randell (JR), Pam Camm, Anne Hughes (AH), Jane Williams (JW), Nicky Slight (NS), Vicky Roberts (VR), Debbie Bauckham (DB), Karen Johnstone (KJ),
Clare Law (CL)

Day	Date	Fixture		Players	PTLC Points	Opp’n Points
Wednesday	3rd May	Looe C	Away	JR PC AH JW	41	51
Tuesday	Postponed to 23rd May	Saltash A	Home	JR NS AH VR	59	28
Tuesday	16th May	Tavistock D	Home	JR NS VR DB	58	30
Wednesday	24th May	Tavistock C	Away	JR AH VR KJ	36	51
Monday	5th June	Menheniot B	Away	JR NS JW DB	43	45
Tuesday	13th June	Looe C	Home	JR NS JW DB	63	26
Monday	26th June	Saltash A	Away	JR NS AH VR	46	46
Sunday	9th July	Tavistock D	Away	NS AH JR DB	72	28
Tuesday	18th July	Tavistock C	Home	JR AH VR CL	41	41
Tuesday	25th July	Menheniot B	Home	AH VR CL DB	22	70

Plymstock ladies went into the final week in second place. The league haven’t decided whether two or one team will be promoted but, even so, second place would be worth having. There were, however, several things acting against that goal. Firstly the opposition in this match were clear leaders of the division. Secondly the two strongest players in the Plymstock Ladies squad were not playing. And thirdly the final match of the third placed side, Tavistock C, is against Tavistock D, so a win there looks fairly certain.

As expected the points were hard to get ..

Plymstock 22 – Menheniot 70

We went into this match in second place in Division 4. We were far enough ahead of third place Ivybridge that we were not looking at dropping a place. Overtaking Devonshires lead of 28 points seemed unlikely too. Will second place be enough ? We don’t know. The league will not decide how many get promoted or relegated until the number of entrants to next years league is known, so probably not until about March 2024.

For the record, even if it didn’t matter, we won 70-26.

Tim and Steve had an easy first match against the Tavistock number 1 pair and had plenty of time to watch the tense struggle on the other court. Dave and Mark lost the first set, then were 3-5 down in the second, then recovered to 5-5 and tie-break. Not only that, but the rallies were really long too. Then Dave and Mark won the tie break and also the 3rd set breaker.

In the second set of matches Tim and Steve struggled much more, whilst Dave and Mark had a relatively easy straight sets victory. Possibly the form team were the Tavistock number 2 pair.

There have been a lot of close matches for the ladies this year. This match was another tie, scores exactly equal, at 41 points each, at home to Tavistock C.

Rain at the start of the evening made it dubious the match would be played but fortunately it soon cleared up for some great tennis. H1 v A1 had more deuces than the Wimbledon final.

Well done to Clare who played her first match of the season.