Individual Tournament Gets Things Up And Running

16/09/25: The 2025/26 season got off to a great start at Eton on Sunday with this year's Individual Tournament.

This is always a fun way to start the season, an informal gathering of some of the stronger players on the circuit and a chance to get some good quality match practice in, often in combinations that otherwise would rarely see the light of day.

A couple of late drop outs reduced this year's contingent from 13 to 11, but three courts were maintained for the majority of the day with the third court featuring variations on two v one or threeway top step competitions.

There were some excellent matches during the course of the day, especially once one or two players had knocked off some early rust. Riki Houlden & Hugo Young both looked in fine fettle as they tuned up for their Kinnaird Cup final replay next weekend and perhaps unsurprisingly they finished top of the scoring charts, averaging 11.0 and 11.8 points per round respectively.

There were some strong performances from everyone else, with lots of close games and the scoring averages for the rest of the field varying between 7.6 and 10.2 per round. There was also a young look to the field, with Howard Wiseman bringing the experience alongside Jack Pemberton, Noah Caplin, Ben Merrett, Alex Abrahams, Gwydion Wiseman, Prajeeth Sathiyamoorthy and 2025 school champions Tanish Arjaria and Aadi Agarwal. The future of the sport looks to be in good hands.

Our thanks go to Advanta Wealth for their sponsorship and to Ryan Perrie and Eton for hosting the tournament.