Three titles for Louis Price

​

With three titles the undoubted star of the nineteenth running of the Cippenham Young Players’ Summer Festival was Louis Price. The Avon youngster, ranked number two in England’s under-13 boys and sixth in the cadet age category, two years higher, swept all before him and won every event open to him across the two days.

​

​

The weekend commenced with the under-12 singles events for which Price was over-age. This left the field wide open and it was the fifth seed, Victor Rioja who finally emerged to win the U12 Boys’ Singles, having eliminated the top seed, Harry Yip, in the semi-final. In the other semi-final, second seed Harrison Emery got the better of Thomas Nicol.

​

In the counterpart U12 girls’ event the two preliminary round groups produced a semi-final line-up of Lauren Loosemoore against Sophie Barcsai and Scarlett Anders against Jessica Moggeridge. The top two seeds emerged from these matches and Loosemore beat Anders in the final.

​

It was the turn of the over-14s on Saturday afternoon and the stage was set for Louis Price to make his entrance into the tournament. The contestants were arranged into eight preliminary round groups with, as is customary, the top two progressing to the main championship event. The top four seeds all progressed with little difficulty from their groups and then all went a further two rounds to take their allotted places in the semi-finals. At that stage Price ended the hopes of Jaiden Aulakh while Louie Evans made his trip from Wales worthwhile by eliminating Stanley Shilton. An entertaining final ended with Price notching up the first of his three titles.

​

From a home club perspective, Cippenham’s Douglas Claridge-Hansen made it all the way through to the quarter-finals where he was defeated by Evans while William Fricker perished one round earlier.

​

The initial round of the under-14 Girls’ Singles was played in three groups from which the top six players emerged. The two finalists from the morning’s under-12 event met again in their group and both progressed with Lauren Loosemore again getting the better of Scarlett Anders. This forced them into separate halves of the main draw and both fell victim to the eventual champion Millie Rogove. Anders was first, beaten in the semi-final, while Loosemore made it past Morgan Davies into the final itself.

​

The under-16 and under-18 age groups on Sunday were played as a mixed event with the girls up against the boys. Both events produced the same result, with top seed Louis Price beating second seed Mathew Pearce in both finals. Three of the four semi-finalists were also the same in  both events with Jonathan Gibson taking the third spot. The fourth place was taken by Ben Allen in the under-16s and Morgan Davies in the under-18s.

​

In all events, those players who finished outside of the top two in their preliminary round groups were entered the consolation events and Cippenham’s Pranav Gudipati did exceptionally well to win this in both the under-14 and under-16 age categories.

​

The tournament, which attracted a decent entry, especially for the Saturday, was organised and refereed by Ken Phillips.