Maccabi Mixed Doubles team win Grand Final; Grade 10 Pennant Team Narrowly Defeated

The Maccabi mixed doubles team, led by Natalee Nahoom, won their Grand Final and were crowned premiers!

The Grade 10 Pennant team, skippered by Joel Rabinov, were gallant in defeat and were narrowly edged out by seven games at three rubbers all.

The Maccabi mixed doubles Premiership winning team L to R: Alex Khakham, Elle Proust, Natalee Nahoom (captain),  Wayne Myers, Evgeni Grishin and David Eldar.

BRTA Mixed Doubles

Section 4 Maccabi 3-6-48 defeated Ormond 1-3-32

Alex Khakham/ Wayne Myers 7-6 6-3
Natalee Nahoom/Elle Proust 4-6 6-2 6-0
Wayne Myers/Natalee Nahoom 6-1 6-1
Alex Khakham/Elle Proust 5-7 2-6

A beautiful sunny day of tennis set the mood and whilst both ladies and mens doubles did not start as we would have liked, both pairs slowly built up momentum, started playing more aggressive tennis and going for their shots.

The men came back from 5-2 down and ended up winning 7-6, 6-3 and the ladies gave away the first set 6-4 but then flicked a switch and won second set 6-2 and the third was a dominant display of winners 6-0.

Wayne and Natalee only let their opponents take 2 games in 2 sets showing great net work, smart winners and proved to be the undefeated mixed doubles pair all season.

Alex and Elle put up a fight and had some really nice points but their opponents were just the stronger pair on the day.

We had a slow start to the season but came back from outside the top four, made it through to finals and absolutely outplayed the top two teams in the semis and then in the finals, who were the strongest teams all season.

Well done team for an awesome season and becoming the 2023 Winter Premiers

- Natalee Nahoom

TENNIS VICTORIA WINTER PENNANT

Grade 10 Maccabi #2 3-51 46 defeated by Kyneton 3-5-53

Nathan Rapoport/ Ilay Givoni 8-6
Charlie Landau/ Joel Rabinov 3-8
Charlie Landau 2-6 0-6
Nathan Rapoport 6-7 1-6
Joel Rabinov 6-0 7-5
Ilay Givoni 6-3 7-6

We learnt we would be playing against Kyneton in (who instead of playing at Playing at Kyneton on their synthetic courts) we lucked out in playing 10 minutes closer at Woodend on their hardcourts. Stephen ruled himself out. Nathan had initially ruled himself out (as he had a holiday booked); but it turned out he was only 30 minutes away (the closest out of everyone)! In a sign of things to come, Joel's car battery didn't get going. That threw things into a bit of chaos for a short period. But ended up making alternative plans and got to the courts just after 1pm.

Nathan and Ilay have done as they have done all season and played well in a closely fought 8-6 win.

Charlie and Joel played a left hander (and a gun player who we later found out is a coach). Down 1-3, they found the right tactics for 3all. Unfortunately went all downhill from there for 3-8.

Charlie played against the best player in the grade. Unfortunately went down 2-6, 0-6.

Joel played against a young teenager. The saying "winning ugly" doesn't do enough justice as to how bad it was. Just the one grounstroke winner from Joel in the first set (a return winner off a 2nd serve with opponent trying to volley!) yet somehow won the set 6-0. The opponent stepped up and found a gameplan in the second set: Joel finally found a rally groundstoke winner at 1-2 in the 2nd set. Joel ended up doing enough to win 7-5 in a match that replicated more of an under 10s match than a pennant final.

Ilay played a fellow teenager in a match full of momentum swings. Trailed 0-2 before levelling it back up.  At 3all, Ilay made his move to serve out the set 6-3. He continued the momentum to lead 2-0 in the 2nd set.  His opponent then stepped up to take a 4-2 lead. Ilay ended up having to save 2 set points at 5-6 to get it to a tiebreak. He had 6-1 in the tiebreak before finishing off the match 7-3 with an ace to the backhand.

Nathan played a mirror version of himself. Nathan had 3 set points in the first set, but was unable to close it out. From there the opponent stepped up (along with Nathan perhaps getting a little tired) going down 6-7, 1-6.

Overall: A close loss. But a proud loss. Before this match, the closest any team has got to Kyneton was a "2-4 loss". So we have done the best out of everyone they have played (never mind thr fact that no-one they would have played would have had to travel over 45 minutes to get there) . Unfortunately it wasn't to be for us.

As for a summary of our season; I thought with the team we had, we were capable of winning a final (which we did)!

Charlie and Ilay's first season of pennant. Charlie struggled a bit (just couldn't get going), though it doesn't help that his double partner (yours truly) played rubbish in the doubles all season.
Nathan had one of his best seasons in pennant (was in virtually every singles matches). He and Ilay formed a successful pair. Just a shame we weren't able to get a 2nd pair to back that up (which I thought we could do, but unfortunately it didn't happen). 
Ilay got better and better by the week: he won every singles match he played for us (and only got pushed to a match tiebreaker twice). 
Stephen has shown glimpses of his improvement in doubles (carried us in 2 doubles wins with me). Just hasn't been able to show it for us yet in singles. But will be able to show it as he has the work ethic to improve. 
As for me; this final summed up my season. Doubles a debacle the whole season, whilst I was playing too defensively the whole season in singles (other than the most two recent games against Monash Uni and the derby). Though the results showed I only lost one singles (a match tiebreaker that I should have won), so a successful season on that front.

It was clear to me that at the halfway at the season, we had the weapons to make finals. However for us to be able to win the flag, we needed to find an extra rubber or two (which I thought we were capable of doing). However we just couldn't find that right doubles pair (someone always threw in a shocker, usually me). The only exception was the Monash final; Charlie and Stephen played well,  however clearly played Monash's best 2 doubles players. Time to enjoy the break before October.

- Joel Rabinov