2025 Club Championships Decided After Weather Delays

Nov 16, 2025

The 2025 SHTC Club Championships took place from Saturday Oct 18 to Nov 15, due to weather interruptions.

The event featured 14 participants in the men’s singles, 7 in the women’s singles, 12 teams in the Open Doubles competition, and 9 teams in the new Family & Social Doubles competition.

A total of 39 matches were played in good spirits across all categories.

We would like to thank to all the participants who participated and contributed to making this event special, particularly those who accommodated for schedule and weather challenges.

The Men’s Singles grand final was much anticipated, with a crowd of over 40 shared with the Family and Social grand final from 2pm on Saturday Oct 15.

The first set was a tight tussle before Josh Frydenberg claimed the first set 7-5. The second set promised to be an even closer encounter, before disaster struck and Josh went down with a serious injury before he retired hurt and George Batziakas claimed the title he last won in 2023, with Josh Frydenberg being the runner-up.

George and the crowd were very gracious in applauding Josh when he finally got up to leave the court and we all wish Josh a speedy recovery.

The Women’s Singles grand final was played during the week due to the players commitments in other competitions with Kasumi Mizote winning the championship for 2025 and Masami Furukawa claiming the runner-up. We had a great participation for the Women’s Singles and we hope to build on this in future years.

The Open Doubles Grand Final match between Ed Smithers / Rick Haydon and Frederic Etiemble / Anthony Green took place on Thursday Nov 13, with Ed and Rick eventually prevailed to defend their Doubles title from 2024.

The new Family & Social Doubles was a great success and the grand final was between Bing Liu / Byron Hsiung and the mother-son team of Kim and Carter Apswoude. Bing and Byron prevailed in the grand final but a big call-out to Carter the youngster, who showed great skill and spirit at such an young age and we wish Carter a great future on the tennis court.

On the Grand Finals Sunday afternoon, the club also organised social tennis and a BBQ, with a VIP presentation of the trophies by the local state MP for Hawthorn, John Pesutto, and prizes to the winner and runners-up in late afternoon. A special thanks to Merran Siddons, who organised the food and drinks for the afternoon, and Jeff Greening, who tirelessly prepared the BBQ single-handedly.