Stephen Appleby and Tom Chesworth emerged as the winners of the Spalding and District Table Tennis League’s annual Val Mackey doubles competition last week.
In this popular event, all entries are split into four groups based on their rankings and then paired randomly from the groups – the highest with lowest and then pairs from the middle two.
The ten pairs, just over half the membership, were divided into two groups where they played a round robin competition.
After the best of three ends matches the top two pairs from each group went into the semi-finals
In Group A, Keith Davey and Peter Chester proved a very able pairing winning three of their four games and topping the table.
Three pairs were then tied with two points – Appleby and Chesworth, Jean White and John Hayter, and Reece Kerry and Richard Matthews.
With all three defeating one of the other two and losing to the other, ends won were counted.
The first two pairs each won three but Kerry and Matthews won only two, so were eliminated.
Appleby and Chesworth had won against White and Hayter so went through.
In Group B, Jeremy Hitcham had the good fortune to be paired with his team-mate Andrew Hay – and this obviously helped them secure three points out of four.
John Gilbert and Ping Wang also took three, but having lost to the other pair were placed second.
In the semis, Gilbert and Wang lost out to Davey and Chester 9-11, 11-9, 6-11, while Appleby and Chesworth reached the final at the expense of Hitcham and Hay 6-11, 11-7, 11-5.
Although the final was played as a best of five ends match, only three were needed with Appleby and Chesworth taking the title 11-4, 13-11, 11-5.
Visit www.tabletennis365.com/Spalding for contact details and other information.
