LRTA Hi / Low Tournament 2024

 Last weekend Hatfield hosted the LRTA Hi/Low Doubles tournament for the first time and we're pleased to say there were plenty of Hatfield Ladies involved. The Hi/Low Doubles as you would expect pairs the player with the highest handicap together with the player with the lowest handicap and so on to hopefully leave all pairs fairly well matched. With only 4 points being the biggest handicap difference between any 2 pairs it promised to be a very interesting tournament.

There were 6 pairs in total and 4 Hatfield Ladies included with Jill Akers teaming up with Rosie Law, Liz Fisher playing with Linda Fairbrother and the all Hatfield combination of Lis Hughes and Ciara Sullivan. All pairs would play each other in a round robin format with all matches 1 set to 6 games played off full handicap. Saturday saw 11 group matches in total with the final 4 group matches taking place on Sunday followed by semi-finals and the final.

The star pair on Saturday were Philippa Wells of Newmarket & Kim Walker of Oratory who won all 4 of their matches and were the only pair guaranteed a place in the semi-finals going into Sunday. Every pair had managed to win at least one match though which meant they were all in with a chance of making the knock-out matches.

Sunday saw Philippa & Kim complete a clean sweep of wins with a devastating 6/0 win in their final group match to take their place in the semi-final where they would meet Hatfield's own Jill Akers and her partner Rosie Law, James's mum and despite a really strong performance from Jill and Rosie they couldn't manage to be the first pair to beat Philippa and Kim, going down 6/2 in the end. Their opponents in the final were Katy Groome of Newmarket and Jane Taylor of Petworth who represented the highest and lowest handicaps in the tournament. Katy has only been playing for a couple of months but is clearly a very talented lady and was improving with every match, whereas Jane used all her experience to keep them going when things looked difficult. That was never more true than in the semi-final against Hatfield's Lis Hughes and Ciara Sullivan who were leading 4/1 and 5/2 before Katy and Jane managed to claw it back to 5/5 40/40 and take that all important point to make it through to the final against the unbeaten pair!

The final was a really good game with lots of winners coming from all 4 players and it was Katy and Jane who actually started the stronger, taking an early lead and it looked like an upset might be on the cards. Philippa and Kim though had an advantage in being the closest pair on handicap and so no real weaker player to play on, as they controlled the ball well, playing on the inexperienced Katy whenever possible and while she did really well, eventually the pressure told and Philippa and Kim took control and eventually closed out the win 6/3 to end unbeaten and much deserved winners. Congratulations to them and all the ladies that took part and many thanks to Linda Fairbrother and Sarah Sullivan for their organisation as well as all those who helped with food and also played host to some of the players from other clubs. It was a really fun and successful event and we look forward to hosting it again next year.