Sidmouth Tennis Club ran the second of its two Quorn Family Tennis events on Sunday, writes Kate Truman.

The competition was organised as part of the national Quorn Family Tennis Cup, a doubles tournament where participating teams are made up of one child and an adult family member, the idea being to get families involved in tennis in a fun and informal way.

Sunday’s competition was for the yellow ball group, so all children competing with an adult family member were between 11 years and 18 years.

It was a beautiful day and well attended with eight pairs competing for the title, including visiting father and son teams Freddie and David King, from Salcombe Regis, and Chris and Freddie Ryland, who had travelled up from the Devonshire Club in Plymouth to take part.

It was an extremely competitive event, but played in good spirit all round, with everyone enjoying their tennis. Split into two groups of four, the teams played a qualifying round-robin at the end of which it was Sidmouth father and son team, Martin and Ollie Truman, who progressed to the final where they met the Plymouth challengers, Chris and Freddie Ryland. Playing just one pro-set, it would the first team to reach eight games to win the title. Determined to do Sidmouth proud, the Trumans got off to a flying start, taking an early 4-1 lead and, despite the Rylands fighting back, the Truman duo managed to maintain their three game lead to take the set 8-5, much to the delight of the Sidmouth supporters.

As well as winning a shocking orange Quorn t-shirt and sunglasses, the pair now progress to the regional final to be played in Poole in two weeks’ time.

Sidmouth club coach Sue Wiltshire said: “The Quorn event is all about encouraging families to have fun while keeping fit and healthy and, as today has shown, tennis is the perfect sport to achieve that. It’s a sport that can be enjoyed at any age and which is really sociable too. All of our juniors should be really proud of themselves: they’ve played some fantastic tennis and shown themselves well able to compete with the adults. Congratulations go to Martin and Ollie. It was an exciting and extremely competitive final and they deserved their win. We wish them luck for the regional event!”