ANDOVER Lawn Tennis Club have signed a sponsorship deal with window, door and conservatory company KJM. The Andover company were happy to show support for a well established, local sporting facility and agreed a three-year deal with the club.

Mark Pearce (managing director) and Anthony Brown of KJM are pictured with ALTC’s Margaret Winnett (chairman) along with the club’s men’s team sporting their new shirts bearing KJM’s logo before their match against East Dorset Tennis Club.

The team players are Myles Cole, Harvey Stuart, Gregor Corcoran and Adrian Shapter.

A close match ensued with the younger Andover team very much on a par with the more experienced East Dorset men.

The match hinged on very tight matches played by the visitor’s second pair. Martyn Isherwood and Adrian Shapter started the afternoon losing the first set 6-3, but came back strongly with powerful serving and ground strokes from Shapter and great volleying from Isherwood to take the second set 7-6. In the 10 point tie-break, the Andover pair fell behind but picked it up, only to lose 11-9, but went onto beat the third pair.

Andover’s first pair, Gregor Corcoran and Jacob Webb beat the third pair and went on to defeat the visiting first pair 6-4, 7-5, playing tight attacking tennis.

Harvey Stuart and Myles Cole, making their debut, played well, prolonging the rallies with athletic retrieving and making some great shots. The consistency of experienced players meant that the visitors came out on top in all their games. With one round to go, the overall score was 3-3.

In the last round Isherwood and Shapter lost 6-2, 6-3 against the first pair. Corcoran and Webb, meanwhile, took on the second pair. They fought well to take the first set on a tie break but went down 6-3 in the second and narrowly lost the deciding tie break.

It might have been a 5-4 win for Andover with a little more luck, but the final result was a 6-3 win for the visitors.