THE Bathurst Tennis Centre over 35s tournament couldn’t have finished on a more exciting note as the two main local entries fought out a thriller in the men’s competition that concluded on Sunday.
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Wet weather threatened the event which was staged across the weekend, and the Bathurst Carillon City team ultimately claimed the title – but not before a hell of a fight.
For good measure, the mixed event was equally close.
“It was awesome to see Eglinton getting involved in the tournament and it always looked like they would meet Carillon in the final,” said tournament co-ordinator Andrew Mitton, who was part of the Carillon City side.
“By the end of the men’s competition it was decided on a countback after a tie in the final; it was four sets apiece at the end of it. It was decided on games.
“We got up by a single game. It was a good way to conclude it all.”
It appeared that Eglinton might have done enough when they produced a shock in one of the final sets, with Christian Dowling and Mitton suffering an unexpected defeat.
That result was recovered, though, by Ben Moulds and Josh Arnold, who knocked over the main Eglinton duo of John Bullock and Brock Lynch.
“We lost a tie-break in our set, so that was a result we probably hadn’t counted on, but to their credit they deserved to be there. They won the pool and defeated us in the round-robin match,” Mitton said.
“Luckily we got a couple of good wins in some of the other sets to give us that small advantage in terms of games.”
In the women’s competition, a team put together by local player Gail Windsor but featuring players from all corners of the compass proved far too strong for their opposition.
They have been a fixture at the event over its previous four editions and have never been far from success, making the final at least in each appearance.
The mixed competition was as close as it gets, with a combined team from Lithgow and Blayney vying with a team that travelled from Taree for the weekend.
At the end of the final, the two sides were locked on four sets apiece and had an identical number of games.
The countback had to go back to their match during the round robin stage to give Lithgow-Blayney the win.
“It was a really good few days of tennis and you can’t ask for much more than to have two of the finals locked up at the end of play,” Mitton said.
“We need to thank everyone that was involved, especially the locals who came and took part and particularly the Eglinton club that got behind it.”
