Saturday turned out to be doubles day during the finals of the BLTC Invitational at the Coral Beach Tennis Club when no less than three of the events went to a pulsating third set.

The veterans of the tournament took the spotlight when Bob Brown and Joe Holmes defeated Herb Bascome and Walter Milborne 6-2, 6-7, 7-6; DeDe Cooper and Laverne Stowe got past Maureen O’Berg and Joan Snyder 6-7, 7-5, 6-2 and finishing the day off was the heart stopping victory by Veronica Dunkerley and Mark Cordeiro over Joan Snyder and Sam Maybury 6-1, 6-7, 7-5.

These games came Maybury had taken the men’s 45 singles title with an exciting 6-4, 7-5 victory over American Price Lowenstein, while Ron Groff surprised George Lynch 6-4, 6-3 to take the men’s 65 singles crown.

In other exciting action Janet Green won one title and lost in another final when she teamed with first timer Christine Creelman to beat Gill Butterfield and Pat Birch 6-2, 6-2 to take the ladies 50 doubles crown, but lost her title in the century mixed doubles final when she and Earl Leader lost to Butterfield and Brian Way 6-2, 6-4.

Meanwhile Stuart Smith came back to prove that he is one of the Island’s premier doubles players after losing in the Mixed Doubles in the first round he teamed with Price Lowenstein to take the men’s 45 title with a straight sets 6-3, 6-1 win over the local combination of Terry Smith and Eugene Simmons 6-3, 6-1.

Possibly the biggest surprise came in the century mixed where it took Butterfield and Way only 55 minutes to dethrone the favoured pair of Green and Leader. But there were no excuses from the veterans. “They just played better than we did today,” said Green.

It was in the mixed doubles final where the crowd was treated to more than two hours of end to end excitement and when it was all over Dunkerley and Cordeiro and taken the measure of Snyder and Maybury. While the play, as expected, of Cordeiro and Maybury neutralised each other, on the day Dunkerley outplayed Smyder and was really the difference in their march to the title, even though when it mattered most Cordeiro showed his class with some clinical strokes.

[bul] Though the Coral Beach Invitational Tennis Tournament got under way with all of the event’s ‘big guns’ on display, it was the unheralded participants who stole the show when the unseeded duo of Carrol Reid and Fraser Moore shocked DeDe Cooper and Brian Way with a commanding 6-0, 6-1 victory.

Young Moore, the son of the Island’s veteran doubles player, John, was, in one word, awesome. While Men’s top seeds Andy Bray and James Collieson were on court, once the score of the Reid/Moore contest spread through the crowd the interest in the other contests suddenly shifted. And they saw a young Moore in full flow.

Mind you, he was playing opponents who had tough singles matches earlier, but still beating Cooper and Way in less than an hour and the seasoned pair getting only one game, was still the talking point of the day. Moore was everywhere and his partner just went along for the ride. During one rally when Way hit a deep lob, that appeared to hit the tape for a winner, Moore ran across the court and hit a backhand down the line that Cooper watched as it passed by.

In a way Cooper and Way could be forgiven because earlier Cooper had teamed with Jill Finnigan to beat Eirian Jones and Kim Burns in a three set marathon 6-0, 4-6, 6-3 while Way had a tough first round match against John Johnston before coming through with a 6-4, 6-1 victory.

While Moore and Reid stole the day’s spotlight the ‘new kid on the block’ Leonie McCloughlin showed her class when she eased past Caroline Darling of England 6-0, 6-0, after earlier teaming with her husband to defeat C. McHarg and C. Boyle 6-1, 6-2 in the Mixed Doubles Open.

While there was excitement in certain areas, it was par for the course with the men’s top seeds as Andy Bray made short work of Alex Smith, winning 6-1, 6-2, while James Collieson came away with a 6-0, 6-0 victory over Richard Butterfield and Samitha Ranaweera came through with a 6-1, 6-0 victory over Nicholas Kempe. Another new kid on the block, Marc Jacobson, is seeded second in the men’s singles section meaning he will have to get past Collieson before he can face Bray.