The Otago tennis team completed a clean sweep at the South Island tennis teams event in Christchurch beating Canterbury Country 10-2, Tasman 8-4, and Canterbury Town 4-3 in the last round contest shortened by rain.
The Town win was tempered by the fact the short format was instituted because of a long rain delay and the limited availability of indoor courts. Also, Canterbury had opened selection to a range of players available for out-of-season selection and some leading players were unavailable.
However, the Otago team had prepared well and had to fight back several times in the final tie from seemingly impossible positions to take the win.
Mitchell Sizemore came back from a 4-1 first set loss to beat Town No 1 Taylor Nelson 4-0 in the second then played two outstanding points at 8-8 in the match tiebreak.
Charlie Tomlinson was down a set and 3-0 before reeling off five games to take the second, and hold on for a 10-8 tiebreak win against Nic Jenkins. He had earlier come back from match points down against Rhys Cromie from Country to win 6-7 6-4 7-5 in three hours.
Paddy Ou fought hard against leading junior Will Schneideman only to lose the first set in
a tiebreak. He varied his play more, scoring often from the
net to win the second 5-3 but
fell behind 1-6 in the match tiebreak and lost it 6-10.
Libby Scott was too powerful for junior Annabel Coates at No 1 but Rileigh Fields went down in straight sets meaning the doubles were all-important.
Scott and Georgia Hume won comfortably to seal the tie and Sizemore and Carlos Reid were pipped 8-10 in the third.
Earlier, Otago had beaten Country 10-2 and the only losses came after Harry James fell heavily on a slippery surface aggravating a hip injury and bruised his knee. He lost his singles and mixed doubles, partnered by Fields.
Scott and Hume were made to work hard but held on in three sets while Sizemore and Ou were impressive dropping few games.
The tie against Tasman was poised at 5-3 overnight and, when Otago was down in all four doubles early on some doubts arose, but it rallied to take three of them to create the margin.
James was comfortably beaten in singles because of restricted movement but bravely fought back with Fields after losing the first set 2-6 to take the third set tiebreak.
Hume fought on to take a three-set win over Suzanne Spencer but Reid and Scott went down in three sets as did Ou and Tomlinson in doubles after having match points in the second set, having led 6-4 5-1.
Scott and Hume were again dominant in doubles and won all three in the weekend in short straight set results.
