Katikati had a winning weekend of tennis with all junior and senior teams recording victories giving the Homewood Tennis Club a terrific boost to the season.
The men's premier team snuck in by the barest of margins 65 games to 64 after matches were tied 3 all and 7 sets, all in a nail-biting away match against arch-rivals Otumoetai. The win gave the Katikati team an unprecedented four-game winning streak and has propelled them into a home semi-final, possibly against the same opponent.
From the word go it was looking like a keen contest with Katikati captain, Kevin Wall throwing a curve ball by breaking up the long-established veteran pairing of Peter O'Dea and Steve Bowen, promoting O'Dea to the top doubles with Sean Martin, and bringing himself into the bottom combination. This very nearly worked, as the number one pair got out to a 6-2 lead in the first set tiebreaker, only to see their good work undone as they lost the next six points. Not being able to find the same level of intensity, they succumbed to a straight set defeat. Meanwhile Wall and Bowen were playing some fine attacking doubles and never let their opposition into the match, levelling the tie at one match all.
The singles match-ups looked intriguing and this turned out to be the case as the afternoon unfolded. Martin found the solid groundstroke game and general court movement of Jason Young a handful and despite serving innumerable aces, was unable to break down his consistent opponent, losing in straight sets. Battling away in the blustery conditions Anton Mitchell overcame a doughty opponent to win yet again at number 4 in two sets, setting the scene for an exciting conclusion. O'Dea and Phil Salmon took to the court needing at least one win in two sets and a three set loss at worst.
This looked like it was going to plan as O'Dea won the first set comfortably and Salmon was playing smart tennis against his much younger opponent. However this changed dramatically as O'Dea lost the second set, while Salmon picked up the second set leaving the entire match sitting on a knife edge, especially as O'Dea went down 3-1 in the third. With his renowned fighting spirit O'Dea climbed his way back with astute drop shots and moving his young opposition around the court to clinch the third set. This left Salmon to try and win the overall tie 4/2 for Homewood, but he couldn't quite keep up the high level of consistent play, but by staying with his big-hitting opponent he garnered enough games to keep his team in the hunt.
There was further suspense on counting up the games as incorrect scores recorded had Otumoetai winning by one game then a draw looked likely, followed by a final tally up edging Homewood to victory.