Cambridge Open 2023 A Big Success!

The second year of the Cambridge Open Series event in Peterborough was a huge success with some top battles across all of the categories. You can find the full results HERE

On a sunny Saturday our Series players congregated at Peterborough Sports Club for the second year of the Cambridge Open UK Racketball Series event. It was a busy day of matches, kicking off at 9.30am and finishing at 7pm, with plenty of our competitors overdue a well earned beer by that point!

Kicking off with the A Grade we had a really well contested group, with Alexis Smith battling through to take the win. Second place came down to a split of just 5 points, as Colin Griggs pipped Paul Knocker Norton to the silver medal. Keith Mabey came through the B Grade in convincing style, not dropping a game through the event, taking down Jeff Fillmore in the final 2/0.

It was a very punchy pair of groups in the Over 40's with both finalists having to get past some very tricky group stage opponents to qualify for the medal match. In the end Barry Talbot overcame Adam Grilli 2/0 to take gold, though with the scores at 11/8, 11/9 it could have gone either way! The Over 50's players similarly had their work cut out, with two big group draws meaning plenty of tough games for all involved. This all came down to a tough final between Robert Hambrook and Simon Phillips, with Robert overcoming the loss of the first game 14/16 to turn it around and take the final and therefore the title 2/1!

The Over 60's had yet again a great draw of players with three groups playing through to see who would get through to the semis and finals stage. Series regulars Robin Chipperfield and Patrick Osborn manage to progress through relatively unscathed into the final stage, with Patrick showing his class and dominance in this age category to come through as a 2/0 winner. He is definitely looking like the one to beat at this age group in the Series and Nationals this year! The Over 70's played out a box of 3, all playing best of 5 against each other, with Geoff Wright coming through as Champion.

Finally, the always entertaining Doubles was won by the new pairing of Paul Norton and Alex Kershaw, who overcame the pre event favourites of Alexis Smith and Nick Jenkins 2/0 in the final, with some classy shot play on show from all. It was great to see a variety of new pairings across the doubles event, we hope that the more people try out this different format in our Series events the more they enjoy it and look to spread it around their home clubs!

A huge thank you to Peterborough Sports Club for hosting us again, we had a great time and we hope to come back up next season.