On Sunday, Sidmouth Tennis Club ran the second of its two Quorn Family Tennis events, 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 11yrs and 18yrs.

Seven pairs competed for the title, including visiting father and son teams Freddie and David King, from Salcombe Regis, and Chris and Freddie Ryland, from the Devonshire Club in Plymouth.

The four visitors had competed in the same event last year and were back to give the title another shot. Sidmouth father and son team, Martin and Ollie Truman, who beat Chris and Freddie in the final last year and progressed as far as the Nationals, were also present and keen to defend their local title.

It was an extremely competitive event but played in good spirit all round, with everyone enjoying their tennis.

Split into two groups, the teams played a qualifying round-robin, the end result of which was a repeat of last year’s final, with Martin and Ollie Truman once again facing off against Plymouth challengers, Chris and Freddie Ryland. Playing just one pro-set, it would the first team to reach eight games to win the title.

In what was an extremely close-fought and exciting match, it looked as though the Trumans would nail the double victory as they battled to a 5-4 lead.

However, a couple of careless unforced errors by the Sidmouth duo at 40-30 up in the following game allowed the Rylands to draw equal at five games all and seize the momentum to take the next three games, winning 8-5.

As well as bagging some Quorn goodies, Chris and Freddie will now progress to the regional final to be played in Poole in two weeks’ time.

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 Chris and Freddie. It was an exciting and extremely competitive final and they deserved their win. We wish them luck for the regional event!”