Kay, Tristao and Ellison head the 2018-19 End of Season Rankings

News

The end of season 2018-19 rankings have thrown up a few interesting results. It has certainly been a year where the spoils have been shared around a little more widely than is usual, perhaps something that is good for the game. Ellison, Tristao, and Kay emerge as the dominant forces in fives, but many others have had their successes. Unusually, our National Singles winner does not head the Singles rankings this year, with Ed Kay pipping Dan Tristao at the top, while in the Doubles we see a tie at the top between Will Ellison and Dan T.

In the Singles, Ed Kay and Dan Tristao each won 3 open events, with Ed winning in London, WofE and NofE, while Dan triumphed at the South East and North West in additional to picking up the National Singles title. However, it has been in the head to heads that enabled Ed to have the edge with his achieving a 3 to 1 success rate in the 4 matches the two played during the season.

Will Ellison won in the South West and retains a solid 3rd position in a season where he took part in rather fewer events than usual. Charlie Brooks takes 4th spot with some solid performances, including a National Singles semi-final, and also benefited from adopting a strategy of not losing to anyone he shouldn’t do. If more players did this, it would make my job doing the rankings a lot easier! However, the prize for the most events won goes to David Butler who won in Yorkshire and Scotland, in addition to picking up the “closed” University and U25 titles, where fewer rankings points are on offer. David moves up to #5 in the list.

Elsewhere, Richie Murby and Andrew Boyd make good progress within the top 10, while Tom Watkinson, Christian Blackaby, Peter Hanton and Ben Kirwan all move into the top 20.

We see a total of 14 new singles entries over the season, the highest of which is Nathan Groombridge-Westacott from Loretto School who reached the quarter-finals in a large entry Scottish event, enough to take him to #23 in the list. We also see two City of Durham Club players added to the list, with Oscar McIntyre and Simon Beattie picking up rankings points in Scotland. Well done to all the new additions.

In the Doubles, 8 different players took a share of the 7 open titles on offer. Will Ellison won 3 events, all with different partners. Dan Tristao retained his National Doubles title which was just sufficient to move him up alongside Will at the top, while Ed Kay moves up very close behind at #3 after winning 3 events, again with different partners, including the National Doubles with Dan T.

Dan Grant (winner of 2 events) and Charlie Brooks (winner in the NW) occupy the next two positions, but at #6 we see Ollie Arnold who won 4 events, two with Theo Parker and two with Ben Beltrami, albeit two of these being the “closed” University and U25 championships. Our final 2018-19 winners in the two “draw for partner” events, where fewer points are on offer, are James Tilston & Ben Chua (South East) and Josh Ferguson & Simon Hodgson who won in Scotland. The latter two players who enter at #22 are amongst 17 new names appearing in the current doubles rankings.

Other high movers include Tom Watkinson (#15) and Archie McCreath (#18) who move into the top 20, while Ben Jourdan (#21), Julian Hanton (#26), Christian Blackaby (#27), Ed Hatton (#29), Ben Kirwan (#29) and Cameron Low (#29) all make it into the top 30. We also see more success in the doubles list from the Loretto school boys.

Tournament entry levels for the 2018-19 season remain at a healthy level, so congratulations to all our championship organisers for all their hard work.

 

To see the full official rankings, just click on the link below.

Official RFA rankings (opens in separate window).

The official RFA rankings are prepared by Dave Hebden.