After holding the Rennie Trophy for 15 years, Lakes beat its main rival, Otago, 9-3 yesterday, establishing what is likely to be an unbeatable lead over the two rounds. On Saturday they beat Southland 11-1 and North Otago 8-4, fielding a depleted line-up.
The Lakes area has attracted many leading young players from surrounding provinces to a quality coaching and development environment and some of those on display have represented New Zealand at junior level.
Riki McLachlan was too strong for Charlie Tomlinson at No1, dropping only two games, while Thomas Hartono battled for three hours to hand Paddy Ou his first defeat for the season, going to 7-6 in the third.
Josh McDermott was on fire and took his first win over an Otago player for some time, allowing Carlos Reid only one game.
The only men’s success for Otago went to Mitchell Sizemore who beat his former McGlashan team-mate, Peter Hartono, 6-4 6-3.
With Libby Scott limited by injury to only playing doubles, Otago struggled in the lower order where Zoe Berryman and Rileigh Fields lost to Suma Ito and Li Ying Moroney respectively, though Fields pushed hard, losing 4-6 in the third.
Georgia Hume found junior international Ines Stephani too seasoned but had her moments in a 6-1, 6-3 loss. In the top single, Megan Rogers showed power in toppling highly ranked national junior Emilia Price, the player who beat her in the Otago Open final last year, battling to a 6-2, 7-6 win.
There was a glimpse of what might have been if Scott had been fully fit when she combined with Rogers to take the top doubles but the other three were comfortably lost. A cameo appearance by former 27th world-ranked doubles Lan Bale helped rub it in for Lakes.
On Saturday, Otago beat North Otago 9-3 and Southland 11-1. The men kept a clean sheet against North Otago but Fields and Berryman lost to Mackenzie Phillips and Nicky Wallace respectively and Rebecca Dellaway and Belinda Hirst beat Rogers and Fields in the top double.
Against Southland, the only rubber lost was when Tomlinson and manager Phil Mirfin, substituting for Reid, dropped a match tiebreak. Reid was pushed to 6-4 in the third by promising youngster Josh Cochrane, who had beaten Chris Bradley for Southland’s only win over Lakes.
In Oamaru, Otago B beat North Otago B 9-3 and South Canterbury A 10-2 while in Te Anau, Lakes B beat Southland B and Northern Southland.
