The IAVI Dublin Region team won the annual estate agents' tennis tournament for the first time when they beat Hooke & MacDonald in the final at Lansdowne Lawn Tennis Club. The event last weekend, which is sponsored by The Irish Times, has become the traditional end-of-summer fixture for many estate agents before embarking on the autumn selling season.
Eleven teams took part this year including Longford-based Quinn Brothers. They were drawn in two groups and two leading teams in each group qualified for the semi-finals.
The Irish Times and Hooke & MacDonald emerged from one group while the IAVI Dublin Region and Sherry FitzGeraldtopped the second group. In the semi-finals, IAVI Dublin Region beat The Irish Times by two matches to one while Hooke & MacDonald secured a 2-1 victory over the Sherry FitzGerald side.
While waiting for the final match to get underway, a competition for the fastest men's and ladies serve was staged. In this new event, The Irish Times side came up trumps with Marguerite Lyster clocking up 74 mph and Lincoln Nelson an astonishing 106 mph.
In a tense final, The IAVI Dublin Region and Hooke & MacDonald competed for the trophy. The IAVI Dublin Region men's doubles pairings of former IAVI President Brendan Donohue and Dermot McMahon beat Hooke & MacDonald's Ken MacDonald and David Cantwell by 6-4. However, the ladies from Hooke & MacDonald, Joan Smith and Lorraine Lyons, proved a formidable pair and comprehensively beat opponents Daphne Kaye and Niamh Hutchinson by 6-1. All rested on the performance of the mixed pairings. IAVI Dublin Region's Trish Wilde and Martin Gilmartin edged ahead of Hooke & MacDonald's Maeve Cantwell and Rob Priestman by 6-4.
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