Twenty-three doubles teams and five singles players recently delighted the many spectators at the 14th annual Lopez Open Tennis Tournament. The tournament is sponsored and hosted by the Lopez Island Community Tennis Association at the Lopez Island tennis facility at the school. It is great to see that participation increased significantly from last year.

Thursday evening, players and families enjoyed the customary “draw party” potluck hosted by Don Smith and Timothy Maxson.

This year two of the four tennis courts have been recently resurfaced thanks to the many generous contributions from players and community-spirited donors. Tax-deductible contributions can still be made to LICTA at P.O. Box 272 in Lopez.

Audrey Wakefield, tournament director, said, “This year we again used the popular round-robin format for the early rounds to allow all players a broad tennis experience and the chance to play a lot of tournament tennis.” Every team played a minimum of 36 games.  Top scorers from the round-robin contests moved on to the semi-finals and finals.

In the singles final match local David Hall outlasted the younger newcomer Whit Jamieson from Seattle in two sets (6-3, 6-3). David repeated as the singles champion for the second year in a row. David is now drinking his morning coffee from his traditional “Nancy Bingham” winner’s trophy mug.

In the women’s doubles final we watched the most exciting match of the tournament.  Melissa Beckman and Annette Alling dropped the first set to Audrey Wakefield and Linda Vint and then came from behind to win the nail-biting second set 7-6 in a tiebreaker.  In the third set 10 point tiebreaker Melissa and Annette captured the win (13-11) in an exciting and well-played match.

In men’s doubles Timothy Maxson and Dean Ciano dominated the field winning their round-robin bracket. In the championship match they had their way with the father-son team of Scott and Whit Jamieson (6-4, 6-3).

The showcase mixed doubles final pitted Jill Toney Dann and her young partner Taj Howe from Orcas Island against Masha Portnaya and Dean Ciano of Seattle.  Dann-Howe eked out the first hard-fought set 7-5.  Portnaya-Ciano jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the second set but Dann-Howe would not be denied and came back to win it 6-4.

Mark your calendars. Next year’s tournament is tentatively scheduled for July 31-Aug. 2.