Saxmundham Men's 1st team play away to Ipswich Men's 2nd team on Thursday 7 October 2021.
Final score: 4-4. Match report by team captain Matthew Last.
It's the return of the floodlit winter league which means only one thing... Rain!!
In what was already going to be a tough game for Sax by playing on their number one enemy the astroturf, the scene was made all the more trickier with constant drizzle and gusty conditions. This meant timing the ball, especially from serves, was certainly a task.
Despite all this at the halfway stage Sax found themselves 3-1 up, with myself and Ewan winning the first 6-4 and then losing a tight second set 3-6 against a solid Ipswich second pair.
Anthony and Chris would have the result of the night winning both sets against their very strong first pair, maybe the deafening music from the court next door doing cardio tennis spurred them on, either way they certainly found the right beat to win 7-5, 6-4.
Onto the second half and in between the change-around a foul comment was heard along the lines of 'may have lost against their first pair but looking at these two this will be a breeze' left myself and Ewan slightly bemused (though to be fair, on the astro I was timing the ball as if I'd been blindfolded).
Unfortunately it didn't fire us up enough, and they were proven correct, flying through the first set with a 6-2 win. Eventually I took the metaphoric blindfold off and actually helped Ewan, who had been on the ball the whole night with clever serving and blistering pace from the groundstrokes.
In a much tighter affair, the set could have gone either way with us actually going 5-4 up, only to fall at the final hurdle and lose the set 5-7.
With cardio tennis ending, the astro was now silent which must have been the reason for our first pair falling asleep and dropping their third set 6-4, only to then bounce back in a gruelling final set to win 7-6 and, crucially, secure a valuable away draw for Saxmundham - getting out winter season truly up and running.
