This weekend saw the 10th running of the Cippenham Junior 4* Open, a prestige event on the national calendar through which players can assist their eligibility for the Mark Bates Ltd age-group National Championships.

Leaderboards will be updated next week on these pages: Juniors | Cadets.

The tournament ran over two days with the cadet events, for Under-15s on Saturday followed by the junior events, Under-19, on Sunday. Some events ran according to the seeding lists and others did not!

The show kicked off with the Cadet Boys’ Singles on Saturday morning. As with all the events, the participants were scheduled into groups of three players for the preliminary round with the top two in each group qualifying for the championship event while the third-placed players transferred to the plate competition.

All the top eight seeds, apart from one, progressed through the preliminary round as winners of their groups. The exception was Oscar Nikolli, sixth seed, who lost a close match against Aaditya Singh from the Ormeau club in Belfast. The 15th and 16th seeds, Harrison Hill and Harry Tomlinson, suffered the same fate, beaten by Euan Hacking and Connor Godley respectively. Singh eventually made it right through to the quarter-final where he fell to fourth seed Hai Lun Chow, while Hacking’s and Godley’s progress was halted one round earlier.

The other quarter-finals saw top seed Adam Alibhai end the run of seventh seed Nishil Shah, third seed Dimitar Dimitrov lose out to eighth seed Theo Kniep and 10th seed Ryan Holland, who one round earlier had eliminated second seed Pablo Ramirez Rioja, lose to fifth seed Ryan Goodier. In the semi-final Alibhai beat Chow and Kniep beat Goodier to set up a final in which Alibhai prevailed against his Kingfisher TTC (Reading) opponent 3-0.

All eight seeds in the afternoon’s Cadet Girls’ Singles won their preliminary round groups and consequently all took their allotted places in the knockout draw. However, Charlotte Wong’s progress was halted at the first stage thereafter, deuce in the fifth, by Assil Sarri. In the quarters, fourth seed Lok You Lam was upended by fifth seed Monica Chang but the top three all prevailed with the other losing quarter-finalists being Chi Yin Pang, Sarri and Catherine Lv.

Top seed Alyssa Nguyen made hard work of her semi-final, needing to come back from 2-1 down to get past Chang, while second seed Soraya Rahmani-Walentynska required only four games to eliminate the amazing para athlete Bly Twomey. Although Nguyen won the first game of the final, the next three all went the way of Ramani-Walentynska to hand the title to the second seed.

Two of the 16 seeds withdrew from the following day’s Junior Boys’ Singles but all but one of the remaining 14 made it through to the knockout stages as group winners. The exception was 16th seed Philipp Snell who lost out over four close games to Theo Kniep, carrying forward his good form from the previous day. However, two of those seeded players failed to progress further than their first knockout match. Fraser Massey was beaten by Jake Davidson while Morgan Turner suffered a similar fate against Lukas Keys.

The next shock was the exit of top seed Joseph Dennison, beaten in the round of 16 by Dimitar Dimitrov. Maybe, this was not such a shock as the precocious talent of Dimitrov then took him past Rex Wong and third seed Krish Chotai all the way to the final. Fourth seed Angad Saggu also fell at the same hurdle, beaten by the unseeded Harrison Hill whose run then also took him to the final via Theo Kniep and, in the semi-final, Pablo Ramirez Rioja. The other quarter-finalists were Fernando Frandes and Jake Davison.

And so to an unlikely final between 15th seed Dimitrov and the unseeded Hill. In a clash of contrasting styles, it was Hill who prevailed in four games against the more exuberant youngster Dimitrov.

The final event of the weekend was the Junior Girls’ Singles. Seven of the eight seeds were present and all won though their groups without mishap. Thereafter, seventh seed Saskia Key was eliminated at the first hurdle by Catherine Lv and eighth seed Anjali Singh by Parmis Ahsani.

The quarter-finals marked the end of all three Cippenham-based players. Despite being seeded fifth and sixth, Rachael Iles and Mia Lakhani both faced higher-ranked players in the form of Maliha Baig and Ella Pashley. Anna Piercey, who had a really close and exciting clash with Jonabel Taguibao in the previous round, lost in four to Chi Yin Pang in a clash between two unseeded players. The other quarter-final saw top seed Hannah Silcock defeat Ahsani.

The last two rounds went according to form with Silcock easily beating Pang and Pashley getting the better of Baig to set up a final between the top two seeds. It took five games but Jersey’s Hannah Silcock eventually overcame her Grantham team-mate Pashley 11-9 after being two games to one adrift.

The tournament was organised by Ken Phillips and Steve Piercey, refereed by Steve Smith and the Cippenham club extends it grateful thanks to the army of volunteer umpires pulled from local sources and from London Academy.

Click below to see photos on Flickr:
Day one | Day two

Results