European University Open 2009 at CURTC
27th-30th of November 2009
5 students entered the European Universities RT Open @ CURTC from Middlesex University; Shovan Tamjidi, Ross Lewry, Rene Schemschat, Dennis Schmidt and Bjoern Lojda.
There was 2 events in this tournament; (1) the Team Event which meant fielding a team of up to 3 to play two singles games and one doubles game in each round in a knockout style format (played off scratch). (2) The Individual H/C Event which meant you would play in a round robin style group to start off with and the top 2 would progress in to the knockout stages, there was 8 groups of 4 (played off the h/c that the student held at the time when the draw was completed), Middlesex fielded all 5 in this event.
Rene & Dennis were both entered in to the team event and individual event, whereas the rest of the team only played in the individual h/c event.
On our first day at the tournament which was Friday 27th of November we all played, either in the team event or the individual h/c event.
Shovan & Dennis were both put in to the same group, which was group 1. The matches for this group started @ 2.30pm. Shovan was the first to play against Ed Granger from Cambridge University. This was the first match to kick off the h/c event, they were both extremely tentative and cautious and were making unforced errors. After about 5 minutes of playing Shovan had built up a lead of 2 games and then started controlling the game and never looked back and won the match 5-2. Shovan than had a break of around 30 minutes and played his 2nd game in Group 1 and lost due to complacency, which meant that his 3rd and final match in this group would be versus Dennis. Friendship was put aside in this match by both players and from the start it looked like they both meant business, the score was even going in to the 5th game which turned out to be a marathon with a lot of chases and changing ends until Shovan won the game on a lucky point and then started pulling away and eventually won the match 5-3. This meant that unfortunatelly he would knock out his friend, Dennis from this event.
In the other groups, Bjoern has won brilliantly and quickly all 3 games in the group stage (5/1, 5/4, 5/2) and therewith moved on to the quarterfinals where he lost against the later winner of the Handicap Tournament Charles-Antoine Hurstel (Paris) who we consider as a part of our own team as he has practiced for 3 months with usin preparation for the tournament at MURTC .
Also Rene started off well with a straight win in his first game (5/2), however, in the end he was the unlucky one out of the three players who won 2/3, so that he got eliminated due to a worse game difference. Ross on his part had a difficult task as well as he had to owe many points and Handicap difference had to be changed even during the game. He got eliminated after he could win 1/3 games in his group.
At the meantime the Team Tournament (off Level) took place in which Dennis had a brilliant start against Tom Carrew Hunt who considered his handicap played 5 points better than Dennis, ongoing Dennis could not finish the game at the score of 9/5. It became close as Tom catched up tp the score of 9/9, however Dennis had the better nerves and won at the 10/4 victory. Therefore the doubles (8/6 victory) was pure formality only.
In the next round, Middlesex clashed the the defending champion CURTC in the Quarterfinals. Both singles were lost 10/0 although passionate fights by both players, however, the level of skill and experience playing this sport was simply too tremendous (e.g.h’cap difference 20-23 points).
But in the end Dennis and Rene drew lessons from these losses, like overall every single player who was competing for Middlesex University at the European Open 2009 Tournament for the first time (Bjoern, Dennis and Rene) or unfortunately for the very last time after many years like Ross and Shovan. We would like to thank them for a wonderful time, being great friends and introducing us to this brilliant game; Real Tennis.
by Shovan Tamjidi & Rene Schemschat
