PHOTOS:
All the finalists
Supporters try to watch
Arnaud Martin and Nick Dyer

 
36 entries, 57 matches, 235 games, 4230 points, a great weekend of squash.
 
The Pembrokeshire Open Squash Tournament was recently held at Milford Haven Leisure Centre, an event attracted which attracted  entries from all over the county and beyond, and limited due to match times, with only two courts in any centre in Pembrokeshire.
 
As organisers we felt this was a real shame as we had quite a lot of players from as far as Cardiff and beyond wishing to enter, and we still had we had to play five of the matches before the weekend to ensure we could fulfil the draws.
 
The event itself was a great success, with many hard fought matches, and it was nice to see the winner’s trophies being spread over the county.
 
We held four categories; under 40’s, over 40’s, over 50’s and the open. This last category was reserved for the county’s top players, the scoring was point a rally to 11, which means every time the ball is in play a point is up for grabs.  If the players reached 10 all in the game then they had to win the game by two clear points, best of five games.
 

Biggest entries in under 40s

 
The under 40’s had the biggest entry of  competitors, each player having to play at least three matches, and all the matches were close and of a high calibre before the final was between Geraint Hodges (Cardigan) and Nick Smith (Swansea).
 
This match did not disappoint, going to five games before Geraint won 3-2, the third game scored 18-16 and the fifth game 15-13 to show how close and hard this match was to win.
 
The plate final for the under 40’s was between Terry Jones from Teifi and Mike Shaw (Pembroke) with Terry’s fitness proving too much for Mike, winning 3-0.
 

Hard-fought over 40s finals

 
The over forty’s final was another hard-fought match going to five games between Dai Warby (Milford Haven) and Jason Davies (Neyland), as neither wanted to give an inch in this match and Jason fought hard to take the 5^th game 12-10 to win this excellent match.
 
The plate final in this category was between Dudley Joseph (Pembroke) and Sarah Davies (Haverfordwest), a great match to watch and the power of Dudley eventually wore down the finesse of Sarah, the match going to Dudley 3-1.
 

Over 50s show real stamina

 
The over 50’s final was between team mates Kevin Lowther and Andy Poole (both Haverfordwest), and Kevin proved shot selection was key in this match and won 3-2 becoming over 50’s champion, whilst the plate final was between Milford players Chris Hancock and David (DOM) Jones,, with Dom’s somewhat unusual shot selection wrong footing Chris time after time before Dom won the match 3-1.
 

Open category shows real class

 
The open category was held for the county’s higher level players, all playing league squash, and the pace of the games in this category showed why they had been separated with high-calibre squash in every match. The final was between Nia Davies (Teifi) and Jonny Leigh (Narberth) who won this event last year. Nia plays squash in Wales at the highest level so this was going to be a tough match for Jonny, but with the match at one-all Jonny started to find good length, pushing Nia to the back of the court time after time so that Jonny won the match 3-1 to become champion for the second year running.
 
The plate final was set up between Gareth Warlow (Haverfordwest) and Martyn  Rudd (Neyland) and this was going to be another hard match but disappointingly Martyn had to withdraw so Gareth collected the plate trophy.
 

Peter Crook’s final thoughts

 
To organise an event like this takes a lot of time and effort if there was one real disappointment for such a successful event it was on the major matches, where we had to limit and rotate the number of spectators viewing from the above court galleries with limited space, again with no glass back courts in Pembrokeshire for players and spectator to sit behind and enjoy the matches,
 
This was no more evident than before the finals, when we secured Arnuad Martin and Nick Dyer, both Welsh premier players playing for Swansea, to play an exhibition match. Here we had to limit the spectators to watch one game each of the match, a real shame as many of the club’s junior players had come along to see this standard of squash.
 
And events like this don’t happen without committed volunteers, Massive thank you to my better half and also squash coach Elena Crook, who helped run the event and sponsored the trophies, Thank you to James Walters, Pembrokeshire Leisure and his staff, also Arnaud Martin and Nick Dyer for putting on a fantastic exhibition match. We have photo’s on our facebook page, Milford Haven Squash Club, and twitter page Meads Squash Club.