The second year of the Cambridge Open Series event in Peterborough was a huge success with some top battles across all of the categories. You can find the full results HERE
On a sunny Saturday our Series players congregated at Peterborough Sports Club for the second year of the Cambridge Open UK Racketball Series event. It was a busy day of matches, kicking off at 9.30am and finishing at 7pm, with plenty of our competitors overdue a well earned beer by that point! Kicking off with the A Grade we had a really well contested group, with Alexis Smith battling through to take the win. Second place came down to a split of just 5 points, as Colin Griggs pipped Paul Knocker Norton to the silver medal. Keith Mabey came through the B Grade in convincing style, not dropping a game through the event, taking down Jeff Fillmore in the final 2/0. It was a very punchy pair of groups in the Over 40's with both finalists having to get past some very tricky group stage opponents to qualify for the medal match. In the end Barry Talbot overcame Adam Grilli 2/0 to take gold, though with the scores at 11/8, 11/9 it could have gone either way! The Over 50's players similarly had their work cut out, with two big group draws meaning plenty of tough games for all involved. This all came down to a tough final between Robert Hambrook and Simon Phillips, with Robert overcoming the loss of the first game 14/16 to turn it around and take the final and therefore the title 2/1! The Over 60's had yet again a great draw of players with three groups playing through to see who would get through to the semis and finals stage. Series regulars Robin Chipperfield and Patrick Osborn manage to progress through relatively unscathed into the final stage, with Patrick showing his class and dominance in this age category to come through as a 2/0 winner. He is definitely looking like the one to beat at this age group in the Series and Nationals this year! The Over 70's played out a box of 3, all playing best of 5 against each other, with Geoff Wright coming through as Champion. Finally, the always entertaining Doubles was won by the new pairing of Paul Norton and Alex Kershaw, who overcame the pre event favourites of Alexis Smith and Nick Jenkins 2/0 in the final, with some classy shot play on show from all. It was great to see a variety of new pairings across the doubles event, we hope that the more people try out this different format in our Series events the more they enjoy it and look to spread it around their home clubs! A huge thank you to Peterborough Sports Club for hosting us again, we had a great time and we hope to come back up next season.
0 Comments
One of our current goals at UK Racketball is to try and drive forward Ladies participation in our Series events. We have such a great social and welcoming community of players, it would be fantastic to bring in more Ladies entrants into our competitions too.
As as result we are introducing a new Ladies B Grade / Non County Singles Category for all Series events and also for the October British Open Championship. This category is aimed at Ladies players of all ages who maybe haven't played any tournament Racketball before, but who play socially in their club Racketball boxes/ladders or with friends. If you have Ladies Club team Racketball side then the players who play at the lower end in the team order would be suitable too (the top end players would be recommended to play in the Ladies Open draw.) While they would of course still be part of a tournament set up, the idea behind this category is to get more local players involved from the area where the Series event is taking place (for example for Peterborough next week it would be those in the Cambridge and surrounding counties area.) Hopefully to just get them enjoying being part of the Series set up and social community and go from there! As an added bonus, any UK Racketball player for the rest of this year who brings ANY new Ladies player entry into a Series tournament (has to have not played in any 2023 Series event so far,) will recieve a Karakal PU Super Grip Twin pack and Twin Ball Tube as a thank you! (Please let us know at [email protected] if that is the case as and when it happens!) If you have any questions about this new initiative at all please do get in touch with Mike Harris at [email protected] *English players manage to scrape through this time round*
Our fouth tournament of the 2023 Series took place at another new venue for the year. This time it was at Newlands LTC in Glasgow for the Scottish Open, and it was great to be able to mix in with the Scottish Racketball fraternity! We had a good bunch of English UK Racketballers making the trip up too, so some great match ups were on hand across the day. In the Open event, match of the tournament was between Luke Bishop and Newlands Head Pro Matt Bedwell. They hadn't come across each other before and proved to be a really balanced match up. Bedwell prevailing 2/1 in games in about 45 minutes of intense play. Mike Harris came through the other side of the draw relatively unscathed, and managed to see off an very determined Bedwell in the Final 2/0 in nearly 40 minutes. Harris' first event of the 2023 calendar as he starts looking toward the British Nationals in July. The B Grade had a great mixture of Scottish and English interest, with Paul Knocker Norton registering his third B Grade title of 2023, managing to get past Eddie Prust 2/0 in a quality final. Norton with patner Danny Weights then managed to secure his second win of the event by beating pre tournament favourites Luke Bishop and Amber Marshall in a brilliant Doubles final. This was a top example of how Doubles Racketball can be both entertaining and hard fought, with very few decisions to be made and lots of great exchanges of play throughout. Marshall took her first title of the 2023 season in the Ladies Open event. The first one that we have had run this Series! It was nice to see a mixture of ages competing here, with the youngest player being 15 and the oldest O50. A great draw and Marshall showing her National Champion quality to come through it. In the Over 50's there was a Scottish victor, with Mike Sutherland from Fife the victor in a really closely fought event. It was great to see a full draw of Scots here, hopefully see some of you guys in the British O50's draw in July! English Over 60's regular John Cordeaux showed his class in his category, taking the event without dropping a game in a strong draw. And finally in the O70s, Graham Greensall registered his first loss in that age group this year to Colin Cruickshank from Edinburgh, in a high quality 3/1 battle. All of the above means that Paul Norton leapfrogs Graham Greensall to top the 2023 Series rankings for the first time! There is some movement in the middle order too, this can all be seen on the lists linked in below. It was the first time we have run a UK Racketball Series event in Scotland and were very grateful to Newlands LTC in Glasgow for hosting us, and RASTA (Racketball Around Scotland) for helping promote the event among their players. It's great to see such a strong uptake in Scottish players for the event and it we are looking forward to doing battle with them once more in future Series tournaments. If any UK Racketball players fancy getting stuck in with the RASTA events you can check out their calendar on their Facebook page. Full draws from Saturday's Scottish Open can be found on Sporty HQ HERE And the current 2023 Series rankings after the results have gone in from Saturday are HERE On our first Series visit to Bristol it was the local players who came out on top in all but one of the categories...
On a progressively soggy day at Redland Green the Devon and Avon players did the damage across the draws, with only Paul Knocker Norton the sole Northbound M5 player to take a win! Josh Smart from Devon was the stand out player of the event, with a hard fought 2/1 Final A Grade win vs Isle of Wight player Olly Staunton. He then backed up admirably straight away afterwards with his Doubles partner Jo Hutchings to take out pre event favourites Bishop & Allman in the Doubles final, in another brutal 2/1 showdown. Hutchings himself proving to be no slouch on the Singles side, coming through the B Grade draw strongly, only to lose to Norton 2/0 in the Final. Calling many in the crowd to debate the legitimacy of Norton’s “B Grade” status given his quality play over the last few series events… A well deserved win for the Yorkshireman though in a quality B draw. Phil Borrett, a Devon boy now living and playing in Bristol provided another title for the Southern possé by taking an on paper tight over 40s draw without dropping a game. His opponent in the final the mercurial Nick Jenkins trying all the tricks in his book, but no luck against the languid lefty style of Borrett. The Over 50s was taken by local Avon and Redland Green player Roger Camp, who having dispatched one of the Series front runners Phil Hall in a tough 2/1 semi final, managed to see off Nick Billington from Shropshire in the final 2/0. Roger’s first Series event of 2023 and he is looking to gear up for an O50s charge going forwards! In the O60s, another local legend Mike Martin took part in his first ever Series event and steamrolled through the draw, not dropping a game through the event. Graham Holmes from Devon did his best to make headway against him in the final bit to no avail. Graham doing very well to come through a tough draw in his own right. All the draws and results can be found on Sporty HQ below, a big thanks to Redland for hosting us and we hope to be back next year for what already has proved to be a very well received and popular event with the players. https://www.sportyhq.com/.../Event-3-South-of-England... We are really looking forward to keeping up the momentum at the Scottish Open at Newlands in Glasgow in two weeks time. Still time to enter so don’t miss out there! The up to date Series rankings can also now be found online, it’s getting tighter at the top after 3 events so it really is all to play for: https://www.sportyhq.com/ranking/group/1727 A huge thanks to new UK Racketball Series sponsors Karakal UK for their generous entry gifts and support of the event at late notice. Great to have you on board and I know the players were chuffed with their new sets of Racketball strings and grips. We are really excited to be able to announce that Karakal UK and UK Racketball are partnering up for the next two Series years - 2023 and 2024!
Karakal will be the headline sponsor for all UK Racketball events - they will be providing the prizes for the Series top 10 placed players, plus the main prizes for the British National and British Open Championships. They will also be aiming to set up a Karakal stall at as many Series and Major events as is feasible, so that players have access to their great equipment on the day. There will also be deals on Racketball equipment on the Karakal website for UK Racketball Series players (more to come on this shortly.) It is absolutely fantastic to have such a leading brand in the sport as our partner. Karakal have done a huge amount to push the boundaries of the game, particularly with their Shadow series of rackets providing a great transitional racket between Squash and Racketball, to better encourage Squash players into the sport. They have several of the top players in the game on their books, with the likes of Tim Vail, Amber Marshall, Patrick Osborn and Mike Harris all sponsored by them. With Karakal on board we are looking forward to being able to continue pushing the game out and around the UK much more, building participation numbers at club level and increasing tournament uptake as we go. Here's to the future! |
OUR 2024 UK RACKETBALL SPONSORS
June 2024
Follow us on Twitter for the latest information and updates |