The Andover Table Tennis Association held its pre-season Hard Bat Tournament on Friday as well as the usual club night for all players.

Numbers were down on last year but most of the top players attended.

A consolation event was held this year for first round losers, in place of a doubles competition which unfortunately made the previous event overrun the time constraints.

In the main event the seeds were Ray Carver, Richard Fettes, Steve Harris and Tony Brown and Harris was unlucky in that Andy Barnes (Andover Open Singles Champion), who came into the draw on the night, beat him in the first round.

Fettes defeated Nick George in the first round and while both did not relish playing with hard bats, the match proved to be very exciting with a lot of good rallies.

Carver cruised through to the semi-final against Barnes who had experienced a much harder passage to get there and it was a tight, cagey game, with Barnes running out the eventual winner 21-11, 21-19.

Brown meanwhile had an easy route to the semi-final where he met Fettes who was fresh from his victory over Karl Jones. Fettes overcame Brown in style 21-14, 21-13.

The final proved an interesting encounter with Fettes taking the first game 21-9. Barnes hit back immediately and took the next game 21-13 and in the deciding game Barnes was in the ascendancy with a ten point lead but turned victory into glorious defeat and lost 21-17.

In the consolation event, as expected, Steve Harris and Nick George made it to the final.

The rallies were long and drawn out with Harris taking the first game comfortably 21-10 before Nick came back strongly in the second game but Steve proved too good, winning 21-18.