SHAIL’S GOOD FORTUNE

Doubles Select Tournament 2009

I suppose I have to admit, I was a little surprised at the result of this tournament. In the previous four years at least one of the players in the winning pair was a DAC ‘A’ ranked member (or very close to it). So when Shail Arora and Peter Fortune reached the final against John Dunwoody and Bob Bendzinski, the odds were with John and Bob, John of course being the A player out of the foursome (no offence to the other three!) John and Bob won their semi final 3-0. They were supposed to play Tom McCarthy and Sandy MacDonald but Sandy unfortunately injured himself one day before the match and had to be replaced. Paul Aubrey was kind enough to step in at the last minute. Paul himself has just started playing doubles again after hip surgery and is still feeling his way around the court, so a big thank you to him for subbing on short notice.

The Fortune / Arora team won their semi final 3-1 over Jim Stroh and John Chouinard. (To reach the semi, Jim and John came from 2-0 down in their second round against Chris Terry and Andrew Spohn to win in 5 in probably the best match of the tournament.)

The final was a terrific bout. While Peter has excellent ball control and uses his lobs and drops with precision, Shail compliments him perfectly by doing all the scrambling, running, digging, scampering and scuttling that is required. And he no doubt needed to do a lot of it because John also has great control and can read the play very well. And while Bob is no slouch to cover the court either, it appeared that the Fortune / Arora team meshed together just a little bit better and took the close match 3 games to 1. (Photo left to right - Bob Bendzinski, John Dunwoody, Shail Arora, Peter Fortune. Photo courtesy of Peter Logan)

The next in-house Doubles Tournament will be the ‘Doubles 100’ starting on January 12. With enough entries, I will be making an ‘A’ and ‘B’ draw… so start hunting down your age appropriate partner…