Melbourn won 12-3

It was a sunny and bloomin’ hot night, with flies buzzing around irritatingly… no, this doesn’t work, does it?
Anyway, yes, a very, very warm evening. Very. As was evident in the opening rally between Jan Brynjolffssen (3) and Jon Noonan, which was genuinely pushing 100 shots and lasted at least a minute if not more. Fine for the pros to do stuff like that, but for us amateurs rallies like that really test the fitness (and muscles). Hearing the score called as only “one-love” at the end of it was rather deflating. Fortunately the rallies that followed in game one were not as long, and their outcomes were more fluctuating – Jan having the better of the opening, Jon taking over in the mid-game but Jan fighting back (aided by a couple of key unforced errors from Jon’s racquet in the latter stages) to recover form 13-9 down and win the game. Errors continued to leak from the Gosling player’s racquet in game two, but he tightened things up in the third and fourth, and crucially also began not only to reach Jan’s drops but counter-drop them for winners of his own. That took us the distance, with Jan digging in to produce a more concentrated, and the key, a more assertive performance, taking more risks on his shots rather than simply hanging in the rallies and letting Jon have the first attacking shot. That said Jan’s best point of the final game was a counter-punch, racing forward to try and pick up an expected drop shot, but Jon had hit it deeper… only for Jan to conjured a top-spun half-volley counter-drop a centimetre above the tin for a winner. Doubly impactful as that made the score 13-9, Jan going on to win 15-13, 15-5, 11-15, 9-15, 15-9.
Mike Herd (2) was next on, up against the skilful and powerful Scot Adam. This made for a contrast in styles as Mike employed his long frame, his stretch and his tenacity to grind Scot down, forcing the Gosling player to play another ball, and another, and another when what he was after were kills (or tins, but rally over here and now either way!). The first two games were initially nip-and-tuck, but as they progressed Mike gradually pulled away to win both comfortable. Game three was a bit of a mess from the Melbourn player’s perspective as three early unforced errors (drops that should have been simple winners going into the tin) left him trailing. It wasn’t really a night for huge effort turning deficits around so Mike somewhat let that game go and chose instead to focus on the fourth. And this time he wasn’t hamstrung by early errors, coming through 15-10, 15-8, 7-15, 15-7.
The final match on court pitted Chris vs Chris, Shaw of Melbourn taking on Ginn of Gosling. Some early sparring and lunging saw the first ten or so points shared reasonably evenly – Chris S was a couple up after it – but as the game progressed Melbourn-Chris’ ability to absorb everything and then when he got a sniff of a chance to press in and push ultra-tight drop shots taken early was causing Gosling-Chris no end of problems. In fact from around 8-5 in the first this ceased to be much of a contest as Chris S cruised through for the loss of only a handful of points – establishing 7-0 leads in both the second and third games was pretty killer. Chris Shaw won 15-5, 15-4, 15-2.
Melbourn skipper Jan remarked “We might not all have had to dig to the same depth for our wins, but we all got there in the end. Maximum points from the evening keeps us pushing the top two in Div.2 nicely.”