At the weekend Gavin Rumgay won
his 2nd Grand Prix of the season with an impressive win in the final over Mike Marsden (
At the same event Craig Howieson won the Under 21's beating Richard Marshall 11.4,11.8, 11.4
Corinna Whitaker reached the final
of the Women's band 1 losing out to Naomi Wilson (
Stewart Crawford produced his best form in a while with a scintillating display to take the Mens Singles at the Newcastle Grand Prix recently.
En route to the final Stewart never dropped a set. This included straight set wins over Michael Marsden and Shaun Marples.
In the final Stewart faced up to the talented but erratic Dale Barham. On paper it looked likely to be a close tussle but no one could have predicted the one sided affair that followed.
Stewart stamped his authority from the off, producing some dynamic forehand winners totally demoralising his opponent.
It has to be said that Barham seemed to be carrying an injury which delayed the game mid way through but with Stewart in this form I doubt it would have affected the outcome.
Stewart eventually ran out the winner by 11-2,11-0,11-7
It was a fitting finale to what had been a great weekend for the large Scottish contingent taking part. On Saturday in the Banded events, Craig Hardie had won the Band 2 and there were runner up spots for Sean Docherty (Band 3), Calum Main (Band 5 and 6 ) and Natasha Milliken and Josie Bruce in the womens Band 2 and 3 respectively.
Gavin Rumgay won the Mens singles title after coming through a couple of tough matches in the knockout stage. In the last 16 he was taken close in the 5th set by Lui Wanzhe, the Norwegian/ Chinese player who was definitely of a higher standard than his seeding of 22 suggests. Gavin used all of his competitive experience in the final set to take 5 of the last 6 point from 6-8 down. Gavin's 3-0 quarter final win over Michael Marsden, the current Grand Prix leader, led to an enthralling semi-final clash with Craig Howieson, who had advanced to this stage by beating seeded players, Damien Nicholls and Niall Cameron. The semi-final contain some excellent attacking rallies from both players and was a match that was well appreciated by the spectators, with Gavin eventually Gavin winning 9-11, 11-7, 11-9, 11-9.
Gavin won the final 3-0 against Ben Barlow, who had earned his place there by beating Tim Yarnall and Wang Zheng, the 2nd and 3rd seeds respectively.
As mentioned, Craig Howieson also
performed well at this Grand Prix and as well as reaching the semi-final of the
main event he also advanced to the semi-final stage of the Band 1 event on
Saturday. He again beat higher seeds in Peter Graham and Niall Cameron but was
eventually beating by Lui Wanzhe
of
Finally, Niall Cameron had his best finish in a Grand Prix this season by reaching the quarter final stage of the Mens singles. Earlier in the day Niall drew a lot of attention to his qualifying matches as he twice fought back from 0-2 down to win his group. He continued in this determined mood through a further three rounds which included wins against David McBeath and Stephen Denny before he met and lost to Craig Howieson in the quarters.