2025 LachWil Cambridge Open

Thanks Tim Cowell

A little bit lost for words on how to start summing up this year’s event. So much work has gone into both the event and the centre in the lead up to it. One of the first additions to this year was the Men’s and Women’s achieving PSA satellite status – $1000 USD prize money for both divisions. The most important part of this is these type of events are the launching pads our local PSA members need to be able to get into higher rating events. For locals Arthur Law and Hannah Slyth to win each of the events will provide a big boost to their rankings to hopefully get better seedings and qualifying positions into future professional tournaments. Throw in the travel cost to leave Perth and these points are even more critical!

The plan is to go bigger next year to reach challenger status with USD3K prize pools for each event. So if you would like to jump on board and assist our local players, please get in contact!

Before we get to the event, it is important to recognise a number of people who played a large part in preparing the centre for the event.

The build up saw some significant renovation tasks take place across the year. Thank you Carsten for the number of hours spent patching and sanding, re-patching, re-sanding all of our walls before a fresh coat of paint on each. My painting helpers, mum dad and Harriet for speeding the process up a bit!

A number of club members helped out at our club busy bee in early November, cleaning up the garden assisting with scaffolding to fix some lights, roof panels and do a nice clean above the courts to brighten them up. This was especially important given I was largely out of action for a couple of months and unable to do much of the heavy lifting!

Onto the squash. We finally got the draws settled after a few re-draws were required in the PSA with some of the international entries unable to get Visas in time to travel. Friday night was relatively smooth sailing, a few upsets here and close calls there but largely running to time. Lisa Christou almost created a boilover in the ladies PSA stretching Clare Slyth to 5 games. Meanwhile Andreas caused a first round upset, reaching the quarter finals of the Men’s PSA with a 3-1 win over Asad Ullah Khan.

Things started to heat up on Saturday morning with a number of 5 setters before 11am! Back to back 5 setters on court 3 had us playing catch up for a while, but a few gaps in the schedule allowed us to catch up and keen mostly to time.

Sunday morning saw our Novice event, with 4 starters who all showed a heap of talent. Zach Lim took out the novice event, special mention goes to tournament sponsor Hillzeez who provided a prize pack for all 4 participants!

When you say saving the best till last, we pretty much had that, with the final Sunday matches on 5/6 courts going to 4 or 5! Lewis Christie held off Andreas 3-2 in the men’s PSA, Linda Towill def Lisa Christou 3-2 in the women’s PSA, Ella Clarke took family bragging rights def older sister Kayla 3-1, Aaron Tracey def Ferri Xu 3-2 in the Men’s Div 1 plate and the PSA final saw Arthur Law overcome Rain Wong (HK) 3-2 to win his first PSA title.

Neil Butler was once again an absolute trooper, keeping the PSA players under control and only having a little bit of paperwork to sort out! Everyone was very well behaved so great job players!

Special thanks to everyone for registering, with plenty of regional players and several from interstate and overseas, we received close to 120 entries!

Tournaments like this don’t happen without our sponsors: Lachwil, Hawthorn Construction, Balcatta Glass, Flinders Financial, Harbinger Mortgage, Dunlop, Hillzeez and Racquetshop Wembley.

Results

Ladies Open W Hannah Slyth RU Clare Slyth 3rd Linda Towill 4th Lisa Christou

Men’s Open W Arthur Law RU Rain Wong 3rd Keidah Bungard 4th Dan Jones P Alex Marsh

Ladies 35+ W Michelle Hodge RU Barb Wood 3rd Katy Scott

Men’s 35+ W Daniel Jones RU Greg Lawton P Mike Tarn

Ladies Div 1 W Teagan Scott RU Barb Wood P Joey Scott

Men’s Div 1 W Hannah Slyth RU Ashton Clement P Aaron Tracey

Men’s Div 2 W Matthew Black RU Mike Clement P Jamie Dougal

Men’s Div 3 W Mauro Amazzini RU Gavin Allaway P Daniel Sharpe

Men’s Div 4 W James Davis RU Jarrod Ennis P Mitchell Wells

Junior Div 1 W Andreas Christou RU Ashton Clement P Alexander Marsh

Junior Div 2 W Emilio Chiarenza RU Bowman Bergquist P Teagan Scott