Seventy-two players entered the London Tournament this year. Twenty-four pairs entered the Festival, with twelve extremely strong pairs entering the Main event, including defending Champions Matthew Wiseman and James Toop. It was good to see such a healthy spread of club representation, including: Old Etonions, Old Berkhamstedians, Lancing Old Boys, Old Cholmelieans, Old Harrovians, Old Olavians, Old Edwardians, Westminster School, Goddington and Park Avenue Clubs, St.Olave’s School, Lancing College, Old Emanuel’s, Emanuel School, Westway Schools, Darrick Wood, Berkhamsted School and City of London School. Especially good to see was the very welcome entry of several pairs from the Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz. The Lyceum players were brought over by Curt Schmitt, and were looked after at the homes of some of the British players – many thanks to those who helped with accommodation! As with the previous year, nineteen clubs were represented!!

As always, the Festival and Championship ran side by side with the younger players in the Festival keeping a keen eye on the play in the main event to see what they are aspiring to. This is a very important part of nurturing younger school players, so that by the time they have left school, they are familiar with the sight of adult Fives, and indeed, will continue to play the game in such events and move their way up the ladder out of the Festival and into the main event if they feel ready to do so.

The Festival was dominated by Westminster and Berkhamsted top pairs who reached the final comfortably. In the final, the Westminster pair of Peter Kennedy and Ben Kent raced off to a flying start, and ran away with the first game, 12-1. David Cooke and Paul Jeffries (Berkhamsted) bounced back well in the second game, but went down 12-10 to lose the game and the match. Balrik Kailey and Dominique Redmond won the Festival Plate.

The Main Tournament was a terrifying event – as ever- to play in, with one-game only matches, unexpected results are always a high possibility, the only safety-net being that the top four go through from each pool, but the order in which you qualify directly determines your fate in the rest of the draw!! Top seeds M Wiseman and Toop comfortably won their pool, with P. Dunbar & Tyler, Hawkins & C.Cooley and Campbell & Herring lined up behind them respectively. The other Pool saw Mason & Illingworth in pole position with H Wiseman & Mew, Wass and Pyman, Chapman & Beenstock taking the remaining positions respectively. All of the pool matches were terrific – the best one being a sudden death result of 15-14 by Mason and Illingwoth over Wass and Pyman.

There were two terrific quarter-finals that went to the final game: Hawkins & C Cooley beat H Wiseman and Mew 2-1, whilst Tyler & Dunbar beat Wass and Pyman 2-1. The top two seeds had straight forward matches to win through to the semi-finals. At one-game-all, Matthew Wiseman retired due to a recurring injury during the semi-final, clearing the path for Chris Cooley and Dan Hawkins into the final. Meanwhile, Mason and Illingworth lost the first game to Dunbar and Tyler, but ran out 3-1, establishing real control of the match during the fourth game.

The final was a good match with incredible rallies, which demonstrated everything one wants to see in a top-level contest. Daniel played a powerful game, but at the end of the day just lacked the consistency to exert real pressure on the score-line. Robin, Chris and Alex all played their roles superbly, and with very few errors. It was particularly pleasing to Alex do so well in a major event for the first time – he played extremely well throughout the Championship, cutting particularly well, and retrieving on the top step with amazing skill and consistency, often frustrating his opponents into making the first error.

Congratulations to Alex and Robin for winning “The Wooden Buttress” Trophy and the London Tournament title.

It would seem highly probably that we may be joined next year in this event by the Nigerian Fives players!! They will be welcomed with opened arms!

Results

Final
R Mason & A Illingworth beat D Hawkins & C Cooley 12-4, 12-4, 12-5

Festival Tournament A
Semi-finals
P Jefferys & D Cooke beat D Amiwaller & J Cooke 12-5, 12-0
B Kent & P Kennedy beat F Krespi & T Peterson 12-8, 13-11

Despite the bad weather, the weekend went really smoothly - seven players from Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz, and some eighty players in all. An extremely high standard of entry in the main draw as before.

London Tournament Report 2003-2004 by Howard Wiseman
Finalised 14th December 2004 by Mike Fenn
efa@etonfives.co.uk

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