Hi guys - just wanted to see how many people were at the Individuals this weekend. did you all enjoy the social on saturday night? any good performances (not mine :-( ) I have to say it was nice to see Paul Trueman there and Chris Roe - both highly ranked national players not scared to play at what is probably a low level for them. It was a great weekend and i discovered a very good way for me to warm up and dispel any match nerves that i am prone to. (turned me into a very scary beast but it worked) Neil
I was there coops, but only for the social side of things! I think Trueman was a class above the rest, as the first game of the mens doubles final showed, and his wins in the quarters and semis of the mixed. I would imagine his mixed final would have been more of the same. We decided to leave a bit early and missed the mixed and ladies doubles finals. Does anyone know who won them? The only problem with the social on Saturday was getting a taxi to take us into the centre of Nottingham! We couldn't get one for ages!
hehe - yeah we all bottled it on Saturday night, our best mixed pair ended up against Cawte and his partner. on top of that he'd only just come off from a hard 2nd round match and his legs ain't in great shape following previous injuries. they ended up conceding by the time they were 12-1 down int he first game. I'm glad the conceded because i have to play with him in the Northumbria Open next weekend. SO all in all the weekend was pretty quiet for us - we all had great plans to to out and get absolutley rat-arsed but ended up keeled over in the hotel nursing sore muscles, to top it all off, by the time we got to the hotel, had showers and got food the bloody 24hr asda had closed. Was well miffed! I can't see anybody beating trueman in the mixed but apparently Mark Sellwood picked up a nasty ankle injury in the 4th round/quarters. will be interested to see exactly how severe that was. it's bound to put top players like Trueman off playing what is really and non-ranking event any thoughts anybody? Neil
I watched the mixed quarter final game with Cawte and his partner, as a friend from my old uni was playing against him. Really good game, he was just a couple of points away from beating Cawte in each end. I think it was 15-13 15-13 and Cawte then won his semi final for the priviledge of being thrashed by Trueman in the final. I think most of the top players are probably put off by having 2 days of playing a couple of easy games against players that are nowhere near their standard. Speaking of that, I though the organisation this year was terrible. They played several games of ladies singles on Saturday at the expense of the doubles games, so if you weren't playing singles you got about 1 game in the whole of Saturday. One of my friends at Strathclyde told me that by Saturday night he had conceded 12 points in the tournament, because he'd only had 3 games to play in 2 whole days, with about 10+ hours of waiting each day. Then he had to play about 5 or 6 games on Sunday back to back with hardly any rest. Surely they could have scheduled it better - it certainly was a few years ago when I played in it.
I certainly agree with that - i'm not sure how they managed to screw it up so badly. They had 12 courts! from what i could tell it seemed like they were playing the games in the oder people registered for the competition on the day. i imagine this caused endless problems which could have been avoided if they'd stuck to the schedule. At one point our mixed pair were sat waiting and worrying while watching our men's doubles pair playing Allinson and Roe. they were game 872 and they were calling games 895 and upwards. It was ludicrous - it's no wonder they ended up going straight on afterwards. If they'd stuck to the schedule they would have been fine. Neil
And while I'm on a rant about the tournament, the seedings (or the missing seeds) were very dubious. They managed to not seed Jamie Neill from Stirling in the singles, who won the Scottish U19 Nationals when he was U18, has won the U19 national doubles twice, and won the junior French open 2 weeks ago. He then goes all the way to the semis, beating Chris Roe (3rd seed I think) in straight games and taking a game from the eventual winner in the semi final. I appreciate that the seeding for such a big tournament is difficult, but he's not exactly the kind of player that would be unknown to the tournament organisers. We were deprived of many good games in the later stages because lots of the good players met each other in the early rounds (and I'm quite annoyed I missed these games as I was still in bed nursing a hangover!).
