We are very proud to announce that we have been voted tennis club of the year in Lancashire. George  accepted the award on behalf of the club at the recent Tennis Lancashire Awards which were held at the Reebok stadium, Bolton. It marked the culmination of a lot of hard work which has gone on behind the scenes at Palmerston to transform the junior tennis program, attract new members and gain the LTA club mark. A lot of praise should go to George our chairman for helping to change the club mentality and to Dave Simms our club coach who has been in charge of overhauling the coaching set up.

Palmerston had other winners on the night as well, with Tom Kyle picking up his Lancashire singles U14 winners trophy. We also won the U14 Aegon team trophy which Tom picked up on behalf of the team.

There was success for some of our players at the recent Lancashire Championships held at the Bolton Arena. We had finalists in 3 events with 2 winners. Tom Kyle was our first success in the Under 14 singles, winning a hard fought match in match tie break after the first two sets were shared. Tom also reached the final of the doubles with Sam Pearce but they lost in straight sets. It was an all Palmerston final in the over 35 event with Marc Black taking on Kev Lewis but in the end Kev ran out a very easy winner.

Lancashire player Neal Skupski has won the Men’s Doubles at the ITF Futures Tournament in Dublin, Ireland.

The 21 year old from Liverpool teamed with Albano Olivetti of France to win the $15,000 tournament, which took place at the Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club.

The unseeded pair battled their way through the draw, defeating French top seeds Julien Maes and Fabrice Martin in the semi-finals, to set up a final against local players James Cluskey and James McGee. Skupski and Olivetti fought hard in the first set and took it 7-4 against the Irish second seeds.  They then went on to win the next set and took the match 7-6, 6-3 to be crowned doubles champions.