Godfrey Munroe used years of experience, roughly two weeks of table work and a stint of weight training to produce an explosive performance of scintillating table tennis as he swept aside all seven of his opponents en route to his second national men’s singles crown.
Munroe, who won his first title in 2001, ended the eight-player, round-robin finals with a perfect 7-0 score but had to dig deep on a number of occasions during last night’s final three rounds.
Veteran Colin France, a three-time winner of the men’s crown took the runner up spot while Christopher Franklyn ended third and Matthew Khan fourth.
The three players were locked on five wins and two losses each which forced tournament organizer Linden Johnson to head for the rule book.
France who defeated Khan 3-0 and lost to Franklyn 2-3 ended with the best aggregate of the three.
His five games won and three lost gave him a plus two ratio, while Franklyn who defeated France 3-2 but lost 1-3 to Khan ended with 4 games won and five lost, while Khan ended with three games won and four games lost for a 75 per cent ratio of win/loss as against Franklyn’s win/loss ratio of 80 percent.
Paul Meusa with three wins and four losses was fifth, Nigel Bryan, two wins and five losses, sixth, Edinho Lewis, one win and six losses seventh and Darwin Walcott who was winless occupied the eighth position.
“I think the round robin was a true test of everyone’s mettle,” the new champion told Stabroek Sport.
Munroe said he felt that the format would ultimately bring out who was the best player.
Asked his impression of the final, Munroe said he felt the standard of table tennis played was “fairly high”.
He attributed fitness and strategy as some of the reasons for his win.
“I did a bit of cross training, played football, was in the gym, a bit of weight training helped,” he said adding that he tried to play every dayleading up to the tournament for the last two weeks.
Munroe is the second general secretary to win the tournament, the first being Sydney Christophe , who won the tournament the last time it was held in 2001.
When told this Munroe quipped:”Maybe we will have to debar the general secretaries.”
And runner up France seemed a bit disappointed not to have won the competition.
“I was hoping that I could have won the whole thing but I made a couple of lapses against Munroe and Edinho lewis,” he said.
“I was hoping to beat everybody. Munroe played very well and he has a lot of experience. He was the most experienced player in the field other than myself.”
France who is indeed as experienced and as wily as they come, felt that the tournament was “very competitive,” and said that the advent of himself and Munroe made it more difficult for the other players to win.
But for a little bit of luck the title and the accolades could have gone to Khan.
In a gripping, five setter which was played at a very high tactical level, Khan led 2-1 in games and 5-1 in the fourth game before Munroe took a time out and changed his playing shirt.
The result was that Munroe won the next four points to knot the scores 5-5.
But Khan still managed to gain two match points when he led 10-8 only for Munroe to knot the scores at 10 before going on to eke out a 12-10 win.
In the deciding set Munroe romped to a 11-5 win.
Munroe also held his nerve to defeat Franklyn in the first match for the two leaders going into yesterday’s final set of matches.
The two were the only unbeaten players after Wednesday’s games racking up 4-0 scores.
Munroe won the first game 11-6 and was down 7-10 in the second which he managed to win 15-13 before closing out the set 11-3 in the third.
Again the matches involving France were the most pleasing for the table tennis connosieurs and the one between Franklyn and France had the sprinkling of spectators on their feet.
France won the first game 11-3 and led 9-7 before Franklyn sprang to life and took the second after a nail- biting tussle 15-13.
France was up 10-6 in the third but again Franklyn reeled off six straight points to take the set 12-10.
He raced to a 8-1 lead in the next game but it was France’s turn to stage a miraculous comeback and he knotted the score at nine before winning 12-10.
In the deciding game, France led 5-1 but Franklyn recovered to take the game 11-6 and the match 3-2.
In other results yesterday, Meusa defeated Bryan 3-0 and Lewis 3-2, Bryan lost 0-3 to France but beat Walcott 3-1, Walcott lost to France 0-3 and 1-3 to Lewis.
The presentation of prizes will take place this afternoon at the same venue, while the top eight players will be treated to dinner at the New Court Yard this evening, courtesy of J.C Paul and Gary Pratt, two former table tennis players.
