Welsh takeaway at Senior Open

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The seeding committee for the Cippenham Super 6 Senior 2-Star Open on 22 October really got it right with the top four seeds all making it through to their allotted positions. A high standard and competitive event concluded with a final match being contested by the top two ranked men in Wales and the match could hardly have been closer. Callum Evans eventually triumphed over Daniel O’Connell 12-10 in the fifth and deciding game having twice recovered from a game deficit.

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Evans also survived a really tough semi-final against Frederico Viterbo, this time having to claw his way back from a 2-0 deficit. However, the match swung in the Welshman’s favour in the third game and never thereafter reversed. O’Connell’s semi-final against Mitchell Jones was also hard fought, despite being 3-1, with the last two games decided by the narrowest of margins.

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Defending champion Martin Gunn was a victim of Evans one round earlier, in the quarter-final, the stage at which Joshua Nashed, Marcin Pijanowski and Chris Bush also perished.

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The Cippenham club’s last survivors were Robert Hansell and Tom Windram. Both made it through their preliminary round groups and then won their first round matches in the knock-out stage to make it to the last sixteen. At that stage, Robert lost to Gunn, deuce in the fifth after having led 2-0, while Tom lost 3-1 to eventual finalist Daniel O’Connell.

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The consolation event was won by Samson Bekele who beat Alex Aston in a very closely fought final.

The tournament was organised by Paul Baker, refereed by Sue Hayes and was over-subscribed with some entries unfortunately having to be rejected.