* Brown Advisory Ladies British Open Doubles 2025

In the ladies’ game, service tends to dominate the course of the matches, and this was true in Saturday’s six Group matches with 77% of the scoring points coming from unreturned serves. As a growing proportion of the top female players are developing very effective conventional ‘Rackets-style’ serves, as opposed to a modified overhead lawn-tennis-style serve that predominated, say, a decade ago, this dominance of serving is liable to continue in the ladies’ game, especially at Queen’s, where the back walls of the Bridgeman and Championship Courts are that much more severe than on most other Rackets courts in UK and North America.

In the first semi-final on Sunday, Cesca & Sophie breezed through to the final with a comprehensive display against Emilia & Georgia. But Claire & Tara, as the holders from 2024, were given a really good battle by Eve & Laura in the second semi, the match going to a deciding third game. Here Claire’s unrivalled experience as a match-player, with so much knowledge of how to win matches gleaned from her outstanding career on the Real Tennis court, came into play, and both Claire and Tara served with growing confidence to win the deciding game 15-3. In retrospect, losing the second game to Eve & Laura in this semi may have actually been beneficial to Claire & Tara for the final, as neither had been able to put in practice time prior to defending their title from 2024, and the extra time on court in this semi may have helped them to ‘get their eye in’ for the match against Cesca & Sophie.

The final delighted the gallery with many spectacular high-class rallies. Few Ladies Doubles matches have ever reached this excellent standard of Rackets. Cesca & Sophie began the better, building a 9-2 lead, only for Claire & Tara to fight back to 10-9, then 11-10. Sophie and Cesca both came out of hand without scoring at 10-11, and Tara & Claire ran out for the first game 15/10. The second game went well for Cesca & Sophie, building leads of 10-1 and then 14-7. Claire & Tara fought back to 11-14, but Sophie & Cesca got back in hand and won the game 15/11. One game all. Cesca served well in the third game – 9 points on serve – and she and Sophie took a 2-games-to-1 lead with a convincing 15/2 score.

The next game saw Tara & Claire beginning to play with growing assurance, taking the match to a decider with a 15/7 score in the 4th. Cesca & Sophie were now beginning to make some costly errors as a result of over-ambitious shot-selection, for example on tricky half-volleys. Claire became the dominant player in the deciding 5th game. Her highly-spinning ‘underarm-twist’ serve from the right box was very effective in extracting service return errors from Sophie, and Cesca was not able to use her ground-stroke power to stem the tide. Cesca & Sophie were behind 3-8 and reached 6-8 before Tara & Claire got in hand again and served out to 15/6 to record a memorable win for the second year in a row. This all bodes well for the Ladies World Doubles Challenge 9-11 May when holders Lea Van der Zwalmen and Cesca Sweet will be working to repeat their win of 2023. 

Many thanks, as ever, to Brown Advisory for their sponsorship.