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The Warkworth Tennis and Squash club ladies have won the North Shore Day Tennis interclub shield for the fourth time, in a competition that ran from October to March.
It was Belmont Park that last took the top spot off Warkworth in 2015/16, when a player was injured and had to be replaced from the reserve team.
Women were up against their long-time rivals from Belmont in the second to last game, but took a healthy win at 10 to 4. Then their final game against Northcote was a wash with Warkworth taking it 13 to 1.
There were 10 teams in the premier division and they had to play 18 matches in order to win.
Keiko Pogoni said the team’s edge was a result of the four of them always playing together, whereas some of the larger clubs had a pool of up to 10 to select players for a game.
“We play each other a lot, so we instinctively know what the other person is going to do on the court and what their strengths are,” Keiko said.
Robin Denton said the competition had an incredible standard of play and North Shore was home to highly talented players.
She said a lot of games came down to super tie-breakers, which happen when both teams have each won a set, and then tie in the third set. The winner of the super tie-breaker is the first team to score 10.
Warkworth had a really tight home game with Mairangi Bay in round 15, with three super tie-breakers across four games.
In the competition, teams of four play four doubles games that sees players 1&2 and 3&4 from either side play each other concurrently, then 1&3 and 2&4.
Fresh from the win, Penny Smith has been selected to represent New Zealand at the Worlds Masters Games in the Super 60 division in 2021, Denton says.
