The Grade 5 Maccabi team L to R: Jordan Jaffe (captain), Jonny Henquin, Daniel Sneider, Assaf Drori, Asaf Nagar and Gilad Nagar. Not pictured: Joel Fredman, Marty Schwarz and Steven Kleytman.
Maccabi's Grade 5 Pennant team advanced to the Grand Final after a hard-fought win away at Norris Bank TC, which finished at 7:30pm! All Maccabi Tennis Club players and supporters are encouraged to support the team in the Grand Final on Saturday 13 September 2025 at 1pm at MCC Glen Iris Valley TC, 260-270 High Street Road, Mount Waverley VIC 3149.
Grade 5 Finals Norris Bank TC 2-5-54 defeated by Maccabi TC 3-6-61
Assaf Drori/Gilad Nagar 6-2 7-6
Jordan Jaffe/Jonny Henquin 6-7 3-6
Asaf Nagar 6-3 6-2
Jordan Jaffe 7-5 6-4
Daniel Sneider 4-6 6-7
Jonny Henquin 4-6
As the only captains report this week, I feel as I have to at least make this report a good length, so hopefully you enjoy.
On thankfully a nice day with not so much wind, our 6 man team took the lovely 1 hour trip up north to Bundoora - a suburb I have never been to and never plan on going back to. We were all very excited to give it our all, but knew it would be a long day as we only had 2 courts.
Arriving at the club, we had come to realise we were up against 4 kids, all between the ages of 11 and 15. This was certainly a surprise for me, but was not going to result in us taking it any easier on them.
To begin, we had the doubles. Assaf and Gilad like the week before, played the no.1 doubles. Through their tactical game spoken in Hebrew which the opposition can’t understand and their incredible chemistry, the pair were able to take the first set. However, the 2nd set was much tougher, with the entire set being neck-and-neck. Although to the credit of Assaf and Gilad, they managed to win a massive tiebreaker, a set which was extremely important many hours later. At this point, it was 2:45pm, and little did both know how long they would be waiting as they both didn’t have another match.
On the other court was Jordan and Jonny. Both starting incredible to start the match, going up 3-0, 30-0 in about 15 minutes. However, from there, there were no easy points. The entire set took about 75 minutes and even though Jordan and Jonny had a set point, they were very upset to go down 8-6 in a tiebreak. The second set was very similar, many long rallies and many 50/50 points. Although, unfortunately the opposition was simply too strong and won the second set 6-3.
At this point we were basically even, and we found out that the opposition had tried to be strategic and swapped their no.1 and no.2 around to try get an easy win at no.2.
Nevertheless, Asaf took the court as no.1 and was determined to get a convincing victory. Although he started slow and was down 3-1 in the first set, that slow start fired him up and led him to take the next 8/9 games of the match. After this switch in momentum, Asaf continued to play at this high level to cruise his way to a big 6-3 6-2 win.
On the other court, Jordan came against their actual no.1 - an 11 year old 8.7 UTR kid who was extremely confident of victory. Although Jordan did not give himself much hope, he made sure to give it his all. With many long rallies, Jordan aimed to be solid and just keep fighting in every point. As the first set reached 5-5 after about an hour, Jordan managed to get an important break to win the first set 7-5 - much to the displeasure of the kid’s father who I had eye witnesses tell me gave a hounding to his kid. In the second set, Jordan found himself 3-0 down, although his will to keep fighting and the fantastic support from both Asaf and Assaf on the sidelines to keep pushing, drove him to win the next 5 games and get a critical second set victory of 6-4.
As Jordan’s singles was going on, Daniel who we had moved up to no.3 to ensure Jonny played as no.4 was pumped to play his first game of the finals series. Coming against an extremely talented kid, Daniel played some of the best tennis he has likely played in the last 12 months, giving it his absolute all and leaving nothing on the court. Unfortunately Daniel went down 6-4 in the first, and 7-6 in the 2nd after having 2 set points. But the whole team couldn’t have been prouder of Daniel as he performed better than we could have expected and only lost by a total of 3 games, which was match defining come an hour later.
Now it was time for Jonny. Jonny only needed to win 4 games at this rate to win the day, however we all told him he needed to win a set to try and motivate him (sorry Jonny). Jonny played the only non kid of the team, the dad of Jordan’s opponent who had turned from screamer to player. As the rest of the team watched on, extremely nervous and trying their best to motivate Jonny - we could all tell Jonny wasn’t playing his absolute best and couldn’t find his rhythm. However, lucky for us, Jonny’s average game is still extremely solid and at 7:30pm on a cold Saturday night in Bundoora, Jonny won the 4th game and we were all so excited to tell him that we had won the day. From there even though Jonny finished the set, even though he couldn’t care, the opponent actually wanted to play a 2nd set at 7:30pm and made Jonny feel bad for wanting to get home by only 8:30pm and not play a set. It was at this stage that we couldn’t stop laughing and couldn’t believe how ridiculous he was being.
At the end of the day, we did it. We are now in a Winter Pennant Grand Final and are determined more than ever to bring a premiership back home to Maccabi. We come up against Kooyong this week, funnily enough a team full of kids again, but we know for certain that all 6 of us are going to give it our absolute all and do whatever it takes to win this Saturday.
Although we don’t know where we are playing, we would love to see as many of you there as possible supporting us - even if it’s for 5 minutes. Hopefully next week I get to write an even longer report and we can all celebrate as a club and bring home a premiership!
- Jordan Jaffe