May has been another busy month on the domestic circuit, with three tournaments held across various age groups.
Our latest round-up covers those as well as an important National Rankings update.
Hampshire Senior Gold
Winchester played host to an action-packed weekend on May 7-8 as the latest Senior Gold event took place.
Top seed Georgina Bland won the women’s singles title after coming through a testing final against Tashvi Parab.
After losing the opening set 21-19 – the only set Bland dropped across the weekend – she recovered to take the next two 21-6 21-19.
The men’s singles final also went to a decider and was won by Dinuka Karunaratne, who overcame second seed Ben Hunt 21-8 18-21 21-12.
The top two seeds contested the mixed doubles showpiece, which saw Ollie Baczala and Vanessa Chien win the deciding set 21-16 against Ben Jarvis and Kiara Henry.
Henry was also a runner-up in the women’s doubles, she and Anne Hubscher were beaten by Chloe Dennis and Sophie Watson, while a successful weekend for Baczala continued in the men’s doubles as he teamed up with Ting Yu Goh to overcome Ashkan Mahmoodian and Nathan Rossiter in straight sets.
U15 gold Loughborough
James Song was hitting the right notes in Loughborough over the same weekend, winning mixed doubles and boys’ doubles crowns.
Song teamed up with Lawrence Chen to beat Jaxon Clarke and Aarav Sujith in the latter, winning the decider 21-4 after two tight opening sets, and joined forces with Sophie Chong to take the mixed title after overcoming Mebel Mano Kurian and Sia Pandit in three sets.
Chong came close to a double of her own, reaching the final of the girls’ doubles only to go down in straight sets against Anna Kalathil George and Rajvi Parab.
Tahmid Ahmed claimed victory in the boys’ singles, beating Aaron John Beppin in the final, while Ashleigh Mok defeated Lexie Rose Edwards in the girls’ singles final.
U11 Gold Hampshire (14 May)
A week on from the Senior Gold event, stars of the future were battling it out in Winchester at an Under-11 equivalent.
Siddhant Pawar and Mutiara Mandala won the boys’ and girls’ singles events and also led the way in their respective doubles tournaments, Pawar finishing victorious alongside Arjun Bhattiprolu and Mandala winning with Michelle Chen.
National Rankings update
The National Rankings are normally calculated on a 12-month rolling period of tournament results.
However, due to the pandemic there is not a full 12 consecutive months of available tournament history, so this has had to be extended to make sure players have at least 12 full months of available tournament history.
This will prevent players’ rankings dipping very low, very quickly or dropping off completely and therefore reduce the impact of Covid on players allowing them to continue playing or return to playing as easily as possible.
The details of how the rankings will be calculated until we return to a full 12 months of consecutive tournaments can be found here, under ‘For the 2022 Season’.
