City’s young tennis stars serve up match-play feast

City of Derry's Tyreece Smyth pictured receiving his winner medal from Mr Peter Fryer, after he won the U12 Plate Final.

Players from all over the North West competed in singles and doubles events at U12, U14, U16 and U18 level.

It is the beginning of what could be a very competitive summer of tennis and the players were eager to set the standard for the rest of the season and they did that in spectacular style with some greatly entertaining matches taking place throughout the championships.

The U12 competition was very impressive with a couple of Ballycastle players meeting in final.

Sean Brogan managed to turn around a 4-1 deficit to win a nail biting final against Fergal McKeown 6-4.

Local lad, Tyreece Smith, won the plate final in fantastic style with 6 -3 win over Matthew Peoples, Burt TC.

The doubles again was dominated by the boys from Ballycastle as Sean Brogan and partner Patrick McMullan defeated Liam Doherty and Fergal McKeown 6 - 4 in the final.

The U14’s had a number of quality players competing and the eventual finalists, Rishika Gidwani and Eoin O’Doherty, had to play some very good tennis to get there.

The final itself went down to the wire with Eoin holding his nerve and his serve to win 7-5. The Plate went to Ramelton local, Ethan McDaid who defeated local lad Micheal Hatrick in the Final. Dempsey Hallwell and Ronan Bonner, both from Greencastle won a very entertaining doubles championship with a 3-2 win over Micheal Hatrick and Matthew Richmond.

In the U16 event Darrell Smith needed all his experience against the very talented young Rishika Gidwani in an all City of Derry Final. Darrell had to work hard for every point and Rishika had him rattled mid way through the match but Darrell won a crucial game at 4-4 and took the title 6-4 in the end.

The U18 group saw young Niall McDaid from Ramelton lad take on local girl Ellen Nayer in the Final.

And what a match it turned out to be. Ellen, with all her class and delicate touches around the court, against the powerful ‘go for it’ style Niall.

It looked as though Ellen would run away with at as she raced into a 4-0 lead only to be pegged back to 5-5 by Niall.

It could have gone either way at this stage but it was the young lad from Ramelton who held his serve in the final game to win 7-5.