Played in front of a spellbound and capacity audience, the Womens Singles final between Sanja Clements (reigning English National Veterans Champion) and Su West was one of the best ever in the Associations 86 year history! Sanja started the match as the hot favourite to take the title over the much less experienced Su West, with both these ladies possessing unique playing styles. Sanja who plays for the Merton Club in the Premier division is a pen hold player with a devastating forehand smash, combined with exceptional blocking skills. This contrasts to Su from the well-known Bournemouth Sports club who also competes in the Premier and is a leftie that plays with aggressive punching interspersed with occasional chopping and short dead blocking on her long pimpled backhand side, with opportunist hard hitting on her forehand wing. The four set final was a great advertisement for womens table tennis that had it all with absolute brilliance from both players in their artistry and shot making skills. The entire crowd were in awe of a match that had brilliant rallies, great movement to the ball with clever serves and deft returns and a pendulum of power that swung one way then the other. Su has developed into an extremely difficult player to play against, with her incomparable style, and in her very short 3 year table tennis career is now a force to be reckoned with. She took the first two sets against Sanja and you could see that the England Champion was on the ropes and put under extreme pressure right from the start. Sanja worked hard to take the third set to get back into the final, but Su just got better and better and ran out a worthy Bournemouth Ladies title winner with a superb 3-1 scoreline.
Su teamed up with Shu Q Ziang to make it a double bubble on the night by taking the womens doubles title over finalists Sanja Clements and Magda Charkot in an excellent five set final.
