Shae regains his title

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The 2018 Club Championships concluded this week with the Open Singles.

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Another good turnout of sixteen players were arranged into four preliminary groups by organisers Elena and Dave Tant. The four seeds were Ricky Hardcastle, the 2017 Maidenhead League Men’s Singles champion and 2016 Cippenham champion, Maciej Dlugozima, the current Maidenhead champion and defending Cippenham champion, Shae Thakker, the 2015 Cippenham champion and runner-up for the past two years, and Laurie Talbot who has been training at Cippenham recently during his short stay in the Slough area.

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Missing out on a seeded position was Graham Trimming who, after losing to Ricky in the group, found himself playing for positions five to sixteen. Successive wins over Michal Garski, Vlad Mihajlina and Igor Liiko secured that fifth place while Michal won the battle for positions nine and lower.

All four seeds made it out of their groups without too much bother but only Shae did so without dropping a game. However, his group was the most closely contested with Tony Jackson featuring in two matches that went the distance of five games, winning against Walter Aldridge and losing to Vlad.

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The semi-finals produced two contrasting matches. Shae ended top seed Ricky’s progress abruptly 3-0 but Laurie’s win over Maciej was much closer after Maciej had recovered from two games down.

The final was a triumph for Shae 3-1 over Laurie to reclaim the title he previously won as an eleven-year old three years ago. Third place was taken by Ricky who beat Maciej 3-1.