With a test match and the final of the Real Tennis World Championship going on, what better way to celebrate some famous victories than for the MCC team to visit CURTC?

Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be a famous victory for CURTC, as the visitors won the day 4-2, but Guy Kirk played like he’d been born to the game, using the strings far more often than the wood for a change and putting in a fantastic performance (ahem, surely some bias on the part of our reporter here? Ed), against erstwhile CURTC player Jonathan Ellis-Miller. The Professor came out a straight sets winner, as did our esteemed Fixtures Secretary Christie Marrian. Despite a slight scare at 1-5 down in the second set, Christie actually looked like he might be enjoying himself as he took on Alec Fitzgerald O’Connor.

As for the rest of the CURTC stalwarts, Gary Weller clocked up the highest number of miles run around the court in a thrilling match against the MCC’s Paul Cattermull, John Bailey and Kate Kirk almost pulled off a three-setter vs Richard Boys-Stones and CURTC defector Paul Forster (standing in for an MCC player who failed to leave the Pavillion) but went down 5-6 at the very end, Vix Harvey for once couldn’t quite reach everything in the corners, although the first set against Richard Buxton could have gone either way at 5-5, and Keith Beechener and Julian Stafford simply played too early in the morning for their respective joints and heads against a more sprightly Tom Carew-Hunt and Paul Cattermull.

The MCC’s Paul Cattermull demonstrates the fancy footwork that foxed our Gary.

Christie Marrian enjoying being 3 games behind the pace.

Gary Weller ready and willing.

John Burnett drops in for lunch with the MCC.

The only slight hiccup occurred when the MCC realised that CURTC operates a BYOT* policy, let’s hope they didn’t spot that the cutlery doesn’t match.

*Bring Your Own Towel