Varsity Tennis; A Mixed Double

With special thanks to our tennis correspondent; Hayyu Amanda for report and pictures.

Six Vincent’s members and their teammates had a short travel to this year’s venue, focused on taking both trophies home. As usual, the format is the best of 21 matches, so the teams battle out to get the first 11 match wins.

The Women’s Blues finished day one with a strong lead on the scoreline, winning 8 matches and losing two—one of the wins included a three and a half hour long three-set match.

In the singles round of the second day, a straight set win by Sama Malik saw the Women’s Blues reach the 11 mark, meaning that they had won the fixture!

This was followed by a high-quality grass tennis being played by Izzy Marshall against the Cambridge number one, which went the Oxford way 4-6 6-2 6-4; the only set she lost in the weekend.

Overall, Oxford women’s won 16 matches and lost only 5 - a testament to their hard work over the past year, and excellent leadership of their captain.

The men’s scoreline never quite settled the same way; the first day ended at 6-6, and entering the last round of doubles, the Men’s Blues were 8-9 down, which meant that they would have to win all the three remaining doubles matches.

With Christie/Emmanuel winning their match convincingly, followed by another win by Bowden/Perez, the crowd gathered around centre court, with the top doubles pairs battling it out.

Though the Oxford pair, Manson/Pickering, had lost the first set, the match intensified and the momentum could shift at any given time.

Unfortunately, with Manson having been injured on his first singles match, Cambridge played some excellent doubles and took home the match, and the trophy.

A special mention must go to Izzy Marshall and Brendan Emmanuel, who both won all their five matches, with Brendan not dropping a set.

Overall, it was a weekend of excellent tennis, and we are very excited to have the Women’s Varsity Trophy back in Oxford.