Guernsey Press

It’s the Dyer and West show

RETURNING Island Games prospects Jo Dyer and Rob West extended their lengthy title runs at the 2018 Island finals.

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It’s now seven individual titles on the bounce for Jo Dyer. (Picture by Jon Guegan, 22626297)

Finals day brought few plot twists as two of the island’s finest swept the winning honours in the Guernsey County Closed Tournament and both these Gotland 2017 gold medallists demonstrated excellent domestic form as Gibraltar 2019 looms.

Following on from Dyer’s faultless preliminaries in which she didn’t lose a single game, she out-hit county teammate Lauren Barker to win 6-1 and 6-1 and claim her seventh island singles title in a remarkable show of dominance.

Judging by Dyer’s post-match reflection, this victory shone brighter than most.

‘I was over the moon, the day went perfectly to be honest, everything that I’d been practising all year just came together,’ she said.

‘If you’d told me in the morning that it was going to go so well, I wouldn’t have believed you – it’s so nice when it all comes together at the same time.’

West trod a similar path in the men’s singles and won his decisive match against fellow island star Nico Robinson 6-0, 6-2.

Certainly, this made impressive viewing as coach West overcame his towering opponent through a blend of consistent ground strokes and dynamic net play to claim the men’s title for the sixth consecutive time and seventh time overall.

‘I was really happy with how I played – I mean particularly last year I had a much closer match with Nico in the final,’ he said afterwards.

‘I was expecting a hard match – there were points that were – and there could’ve been some turning points in some of the sets ... the scoreline suggests it was comfortable, but it wasn’t.’

With Dyer also sealing the women’s doubles win after she and Gotland partner Natalie Le Cras beat Barker and Tracy Hubert 6-0, 6-4, featuring a commanding first set that Dyer hailed as one of her best ever, she made her case as overwhelming favourite for the mixed doubles.

She was in familiar territory alongside men’s champ West and the gold-winning Island Games duo took to the final against the Barker-Robinson duo.

The experienced West-Dyer partnership didn’t disappoint and showed their class to win for a third time, going 6-3, 6-2 for a bonus title each.

This made it a particularly positive day for Dyer, who retained all three of last year’s titles, and West was delighted to retain both his singles and mixed titles – although whether he can consolidate this in the rescheduled men’s doubles is a question that will be answered this weekend.

The club stalwart will join young Jonty Carnachan against frequent rival Robinson and his team-mate Omar Pitarch for the delayed final.

Another key factor for Island Games selector and referee Rick Denton was the emerging junior strength on show and among them, junior Jenny Hutchins scalped doubles star Natalie Le Cras in the particularly close ladies’ consolation singles, taking the tiebreaker 13-11.

‘I am always pleased to see our talented island players perform at their best and the improvements now being shown by our Guernsey team in this tournament bode very well for our performance in Gibraltar in 2019 and for our overall team spirit,’ added Denton.

In the meantime, the county squad will tune up at November’s Cambridge Winter League.