The Surrey Classic 2025 Report
We returned to The Bourne Club for the second year under the shining sun (no storm Amy thankfully!), where we had double Firth titles (Christophe in C grade and Cameron in U18) plus wins for James Simpson and Matilda Parslow in the Elite categories, Rickie Hardcastle (Men’s B), and Izzy Bramhall (+55s).
The men’s A was a four player round robin, with racketlon stalwarts Jack Bishop and Jon Spinks joined by last year’s runner up James Simpson and recent Oxfordshire B grade winner Jack Taylor. All the Js.. and all to play for!
Jack Taylor showed his recent improvements, with solid wins over Jack B and Jon to set up a final match (and turns out, the actual final) against James Simpson. In the final, James was unfazed by Jack’s table tennis, which had upset both Jack B and Jon earlier in the day, with James winning an impressive 21-6. Jack got his revenge in the badminton with a 21-2 win, however James’s squash is ‘not bad’, as some may say, and he equalled his table tennis win of 21-6 to need 11 points in the tennis. The tennis was very entertaining, with Jack trying his best to move James all around the court with many good drops and lobs, however James was solid and reached his 11 points comfortably. A good win for James and a great finish for Jack in his first A grade!
The women’s round robin featured three racketlon regulars, Jo Shelley, Matilda Parslow and Ellie Thomas, along with singles newcomer (but Ebbisham first timer doubles winner!) Claire Royall.
Matilda recorded some good wins over teammates Jo and Ellie, not needing to take out her tennis racket to take the title for the 2nd time. Jo beat Ellie to take 2nd place in an exciting match, with close fought battles in the first three sports. An excellent squash set finishing 22-20 to Jo meant that she needed just 5 points in tennis for the win. Claire put up an excellent fight in her first singles event, with excellent badminton wins (all <8!) and reaching double figures in tennis in two of her matches.
Newcomer Nathan Wooster was joined by 3 tough opponents in another round robin for the men’s B event. Ricky Hardcastle battled through with a +2 win over Paul Puget with some incredible tennis nerves, winning 21-7 to secure the win which would also give him the title. Paul Puget beat James Trueman to secure 2nd place with solid badminton and squash throughout.
The seniors 55+ podium ended up exactly the same as last year – with Malcolm Sapeira in 2nd place and Izzy Bramhall storming into 1st. Izzy’s performance was impressive, not needing to play tennis and only dropping more than 10 points in one single squash set (vs Malcolm). 065 GB squad members Ray Ryan and Phil Pinto rounded out the set, with a fantastic battle between the two for 3rd place, with Ray emerging as the victor in a points-filled match.
#1 seed Christophe Firth, who had seen heartbreak at Oxfordshire recently losing on a gumi in the C grade final, came back strong and got the win! He had two tough matches on the way to the final, needing strong tennis victories in both, before beating newcomer (other half of the first timer doubles victors in Ebbisham) Paul Aylen in a very tight match, with some very high quality tennis. Tim Fitches beat Gael Guetard to take 3rd place.
With another category mirroring last year’s event, Cameron Firth stormed to the win in the U18s, having won the U14s category last year. Joseph Fitches (last year’s 3rd place) came second, with newcomer Fin Hazeldine in 3rd. Samuel, at just 10 years old, held his own against the older boys!
A huge thank you to Kieran Shelley for organising and running a very smooth tournament, and to The Bourne Club for hosting us again.
You can see the full results here: https://www.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/draws.aspx?id=d428ee6b-97c9-41a8-8f24-c0b7436c9f06
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