Our best 21 rackets players were entered at Queen’s Club London in December. There are four tournaments altogether running from Sunday 10 December until the Finals on Saturday 16 December.

The main tournament is the Foster Cup and our boys Sam Seecharan and Jake Hazari-Webb were given the 2nd and 4th seeds respectively. Our hopes were high that at least one of them would reach the final and we were not disappointed.

Jake won his first round with a very gutsy performance but was thwarted in the quarter finals by a very close defeat, losing 2-3.

Sam reached the semi-finals, playing somewhat moderately, but then he began to shine.

He was up against last season’s U16 Champion, Flynn Jennings of Haileybury, and this proved to be the best match of the week. Sam took game one easily, only for Jennings to fight back in game two. Seech had to dig deep to keep Jennings at bay. Pulsating rallies, ferocious hitting by both players, as well as top class classical rackets abounded. The match, from beginning to end, was a standard of the highest class, and Seech managed to win it by 15/0, 12/15, 15/12, 15/12.

So on to the Final where he now had to finish the job in front of a packed gallery at Queen’s, including OTs, parents, and current Tonbridge boys. Tonbridge School completely takes over Queen’s in these finals and our level of support is quite extraordinary. Other schools cannot understand how this happens. DON’T THEY KNOW ME?!

In Sam’s way stood Bertie Vallat, the Number One seed and previous winner of every junior final he had played in at Queen’s. Seech came out swinging. Serves were hammered at Vallat, loose balls in rallies destroyed with venom. Game one in the bag. Game two was nasty! The score reached 12-12 and some of the Tonbridge supporters could barely watch. Nerves jangling, Seech slammed another couple of huge winners and served an ace. Two games to love. He still needed to maintain his composure and so he did. A masterful 3rd game, where he completely overwhelmed Vallat, was superb to witness. What a performance, and the Tonbridge crowd went completely wild. The final score was 15/1, 15/12, 15/3. It was all totally astounding, and Samuel deserved all the congratulations that were bestowed upon him. He was simply awesome.

David Makey