THE Game4Padel Tour continues to go from strength to strength as over the weekend Thistle Padel Club in Edinburgh hosted the LTA Padel Regional Ladies Grade Three and Men’s Grade Three and Four events.
Despite the fact the school holidays are now in full flow, 12 men’s pairs and six ladies' partnerships gathered to tough it out at Thistle with the gents’ events held on Saturday and the girls’ competition on Sunday.
Taking stock of another successful tournament, Game4Padel Tour manager Neil Harden felt that, in the words of the song, ‘everyone is a winner’: “There were a lot of really tight matches, some great padel and the weather was pretty good too, so overall it was a very successful weekend and congratulations to the winners and everyone who took part,” said Neil.
He continued: “We are steadily growing as a tour. Once the school holidays are over, I am confident we will grow and build on this. There were people who would have played but are on holiday right now and they will come back into the mix next time.
“The great thing is that the players know they are going to get several matches which will be competitive and also there is a nice social aspect and I think it is just a great formula with a day’s play for each event.”
The first event to be held was the Men’s G4 which saw Aly Findlay and Jeremy Tilman survive a determined fight-back by Jorge Del Pozo and Oriol Ortigosa to hold their nerve and prevail 6-3, 7-5.
Reflecting on his partnership’s first tournament win Aly admitted he is already looking to use this maiden triumph to step up a level and he said: “Jeremy and I had played together before but this is our first victory and to get three matches in the one day against guys of a similar level was tremendous. For us the next step is to try a Grade 3 and really test ourselves.
“That said things got pretty tight in the second set and at 4-3 up Jorge and Oriol raised their game to nick our serve, but thankfully we managed to come back from that and close out the set and we are just really pleased to get the win.
“I’d also like to give a shout out to Neil Harden. We had three matches in total with a 9am start and right the way through to the final everything ran smoothly, so all credit to Neil for doing a great job with the organisation.”
Honourable mention must go to Douglas Wood and Andrew Ligertwood who defeated Craig Mooney and Javier Palacian 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 in an epic final in the consolation event which was arguably the match of the Grade 4 tournament.
Next up was the Grade 3 Men’s event which saw Game4Padel’s very own Vincent Hivert and Ross Murdoch defeating Scotland over-55 international John Byrne and Glasgow Western tennis ace Gavin Picken 6-3, 6-4 to claim first place in the five-team round-robin event.
After four tough matches Vincent admitted it was a relief for his pairing to get over the winning line: “In terms of my partnership with Ross it was great to get the win against such a highly competitive field with some really good players competing.
“We are a similar standard and Ross covers a lot of space and has very good hands and our hope is we can keep practising and improving and just enjoy playing together. But every one of our matches was tough and from a personal perspective it was a relief the body held out!”
Special mention must be made of the third-placed partnership of Alejandro De La Caba Medina and Antonio Fernandez-Llebrez Martin who were playing in their final event before Alejandro returns to Spain. The two señors pushed the eventual champions all the way before losing 6-7 (5), 4-6 in arguably the match of the G3 event.
The Ladies G4 event on Sunday saw the Edinburgh/Aberdeen pairing of Karen Crawford and Rachel Richmond posting an impressive 6-1, 6-3 victory over Michelle Crease and Saida Faraco in the title match.
For Rachel the victory came down to some clever pre-match prep as she explained: “We knew that it would be tough as Michelle and Saida have done really well in a national tournament recently and also with Karen and I not having played together before this was going to be a real test.
“But Karen and I just got each other’s game straight away and we had a game plan where she covered the middle and it just all fell into place. It was a really good win, and we are just delighted with the way we played. We played four back-to-back matches and that was a challenge but we stayed unbeaten so it went very well.
“Now we are going to look at other competitions to play and maybe even test ourselves down in England as we played really well together and are keen to go again.”
And special mention must be made of the Bridge of Allan debutante duo of Debbie Gillespie and Hazel Dewar who claimed first place in the consolation event with a fine 6-1, 6-0 victory over Louise McKenzie and Aida Perez Palacios.
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