One of the men's finalists for next week has been found in Dunedin premier club tennis.
Eastern Harbour won a close contest against McGlashan on a countback after it was agreed it would count for both the final round robin tie and the sudden death semifinal, owing to McGlashan being unavailable for the midweek semifinal against the same team. It will be in Auckland playing in the national secondary schools finals during the week.
The other semifinal will be between Cosy Dell, which qualified top, and Mornington-Roslyn, which did enough on Saturday against Balmacewen to take the fourth spot. It is to be played on Tuesday, indoors.
McGlashan was without the services of its No 1, Otago Open champion Harry James, who was absent trying out for an American scholarship, but he will be available for the national schools' event.
In his absence Oliver Reid split the first two sets with Campbell Higgins before falling away to lose the third set 6-0.
Carlos Reid and Paddy Ou beat Phil Mirfin and Ryan Eggers in tight contests, but Mike Smith took a vital 6-0, 6-0 win over McGlashan replacement Tino Bryant-Tokelau and this proved decisive in the games countback.
Harbour won 3-3 (8 sets all, 85 games to 71), but it took two third-set tiebreak doubles to decide the countback. Both teams scored the same number of games in each double but McGlashan needed to do more.
Balmacewen needed to beat Mornington-Roslyn 4-2 to draw level or 5-1 to go ahead on points for the season, but could only manage a 3-3 draw and lost by eight games on countback.
Followers will need to be early if they want to see Cosy Dell No 1 Nick Hornstein in the final, as he beat both James Bourne and Oliver Reid 6-0, 6-0 in recent results. Cosy Dell played McGlashan on Saturday morning to complete a catch-up tie and won on countback though going down 4-2 on court. McGlashan played an unqualified player Kyu Kim to give him more court time before the Auckland trip, in what was effectively a meaningless tie to complete the round robin.
Cosy Dell also beat Taieri 6-0 and Balmacewen beat Harbour eight sets to seven in other ties previously rained off.
Eastern Harbour completed the round robin well in front, despite losing to Taieri 5-1 on Saturday. The top half was closely contested. Jessie Stevenson beat Debbie Cartwright 7-6, 1-6, 6-2 and Canterbury student Rebecca Harkerss outlasted Debbie Stevens 6-4, 5-7, 7-6, but the weakened Harbour team was dominated in the lower order.
Cartwright and Stevens picked up the bonus point in the top double.
St Clair beat Mornington-Roslyn 4-2 in the other women's tie.
