Enniskillen junior tennis players at the Dublin Tournaments

Local junior tennis players have not been resting up too long over the Christmas break. Two of Enniskillen’s junior players were in action in Dublin during the week after Christmas. Adam Donaldson played in the National Indoor tournament while Sarah Cousins was making her debut at the U10 national matchplay event.

Adam Donaldson, in his final year at U18 level, played in the National Indoor tournament held at David Lloyd Riverview, beginning on Saturday, December 27 and ending on New Year’s Eve. His performances at the tournament show good promise for the year ahead, as he reached the quarter-finals, defeating one of the top seeds along the way. His first round match was against Andrew McKeeman from Belfast and Adam won that one with a comfortable 6/0, 6/1 result.

However that pitted him against the tournament’s number three seed, Jack Hughes from Naas. They had never played each other before and after winning the first set 6/2, Adam realised he was playing well. However the second set squared the match with Jack Hughes coming back into the game to win 6/1. Adam dominated the third set and won it 6/3 to win the match and a place in the quarter-final. He was the only unseeded player to make the quarter-finals. His opponent was Roman Grogan , another Leinster based player who was seeded five for the tournament. He proved a more diffucult opponent, although both players slugged it out during the first set with neither player giving anything away at 6-6. But in the tie-break, Roman Grogan won a break and went on to win the set. He then went on to win the second set and the match. However it was a pleasing performance for Adam as he looks ahead to 2009.

Meanwhile Sarah Cousins finished a creditable 10th out of 16 hopefuls taking part in the U10 national matchplay at Tennis Ireland’s National Centre at Dublin City University. Over a period of two days she won two out of her four competitive matches and the results will give her the confidence to continue to progress. Sarah was one of three representatives from Ulster and she finished the strongest of the three after the competition.