Melbourn won 9-3

The 2nds kept themselves motoring along nicely towards the top of Herts Div.4 with a 9-3 win over Berkhamsted 3rds.

The day started badly as our planned 3rd string was forced to back out with a stomach bug, and unfortunately everyone else was either on holiday, ineligible having played up too often, or had already made unchangeable other plans. That meant the remaining team of Kate Bradshaw (1) and Moises Estrelles Navarro (2) started a string down.

Fortunately for the 2nds, both delivered 3-0 wins. In Moises case this came against James Barron aka “Baz” aka “The man who hates backhands”. Baz’s tendency to hung the backhand wall so he can use his forehand on everything took Moises a while to adjust to – to be fair to the Berko player his forehand is pretty devastating, well it would have to be to make him effective enough to play at a Squashlevel of ~1500. And staying away from it is pretty tricky; when asked afterwards if he had managed to make Baz hit a backhand, Moises response was “no”. But it didn’t matter overall as simply hitting far enough away into the vacant forehand spaces was good enough to move through a 15-8, 15-7, 15-10 win.

That sent it to Kate’s match against Grant Kleiner. Grant is a nice player, with lovely touch around the front of the court. His problem was, the same is true of Kate… but more so – cf. the Squashlevels of the two players going in: 3075 for Kate and 1775 for Grant. The difference is mostly on the movement side, as Kate bounces and bounds around the court (all that fitness, strengthening and ghosting work paying dividends), picking up balls she has no right to get to. That neutralised enough of Grant’s attacks to build a comprehensive two-love lead. Kate being Kate the third was a bit closer (keep those crowds entertained! 😉) but even so she wrapped up a 15-9, 15-5, 15-12 win.