Cambridge took its Division 4 team to the surroundings of Hampton Court for their latest National League fixture. At this time in the season it is important to pick up as many wins and points as possible as the semi finals loom large in the next month and, with this team in a strong position, it was important to take a victory to move up the group table.

First up Jimmy Campbell, himself playing in Division 5 as well, was standing in for CURTC’s Div 4 team in this fixture and he justified his selection. Taking on David Blizzard, Jimmy lost the opening couple of games but once he started serving to better length and reading David’s return of serve better the match soon levelled up and Jimmy pushed on to take the opening set 6/3. Despite his own vocal disapproval for the way he was playing (Jimmy has a tendency to think he is playing badly if he doesn’t smash grilles and dedans like a certain Mr Fahey…) the match never really looked in doubt as he certainly started moving around the court better and won the match with a 6/3 6/2 scoreline.

Next up was captain Jules Camp, still with an outside chance of claiming the division’s MVP award. This was clearly in mind as he stormed the first set 6/2 with a more aggressive approach than usual, but it paid dividends as he then claimed game after game to race into a 5/1 lead in the second. A moment of concentration lapse meant he lost the next game, despite having match point, but made no mistake at the second time of asking, closing it out 6/2 6/2. The overall match was won but every singles counts for points so the last match was by no means a dead rubber.

Finally Andrew Petrie, in his second match of the season for this team, took to the court against RTC’s Simon Edmond, who was also a stand in. Andrew’s aggressive style of play worked well early on, but a few too many errors meant Simon was able to claim the first set 6/3. The second was a different story, as Andrew started hitting the ball with more accuracy and for a run of 3 or 4 games everything came out of the middle of his strings as sweetly as it could. Unfortunately at 5/5 in the set Andrew missed dedans on important points and Simon won the game and match 6/3 6/5 to get Hampton on the board. We are always hosted well by RTC, and enjoy the delightful cooking of David Blizzard very much – many thanks to him for looking after us!