North Open Round up

October 27, 2026

A huge thanks to all the players, their families and coaches for braving Storm Boelo to travel to Dundee for the North of Scotland Open Championships. Your support of the event is much appreciated and we hope you had an enjoyable day and a safe journey home.

In the Men’s Singles most of the top seeds made it through to the latter stages although sadly Christopher Main had to withdraw after winning his first group. The pick of the quarterfinals saw Daniel Tibbetts beating top seed Vitalii Sazhniev in five sets while Joe Mulhern came back from 0-2 to defeat Jamie Johnson. The semi’s saw Danny Bajwa see off the challenge of Daniel 3-1 while Dean Robertson ousted Joe in three tight sets. The final was a very closely fought encounter but Danny’s experience proved decisive and he retained the title with a 3-1 victory.

The Ladies Singles also threw up some surprising results with Jieyu Ren topping the second group ahead of Paula Callaghan. In the semis Paula took a two set lead against her good friend and teammate Alisa Khalid however Alisa fought back to win the next three ends and claim victory. The other semi saw Alexandra Hart sweep past Jieyu in straight sets. The final was a closely fought encounter but it was Alex who secured a three set win to take the title for the first time.

The Junior Boys’ event proved extremely competitive with 24 players competing for the title. Most of the seeds progressed safely although Jakub Krzyzostaniak lost out to Aaron McKay and Inniyan Jayaraj defeated Robbie Martin in five sets. We had originally planned for only one player qualifying from the groups however time allowed for two to progress. The semi finals saw Dean Robertson defeat Jakub 12-10 in the deciding end while Victor Chen saw off the challenge of Sam Endall. In the final Dean took the title 3-1 with Victor having to settle for runners up spot.

Alexandra Hart took the Junior Girls title although she had to fight back from 0-2 down in the semi final to see off Anne Chan before going on to beat Nikki Mo 3-1 in the final. Alex capped a fine day, taking her third title, with victory again over Nikki in the Cadet Girls final.

The Cadet Boys provided a few shock results with the top two seeds, Inniyan and Lewis Murray, eliminated in the semis against Strahil Stefanov and Keir Niven-Duffy respectively. Strahil was too strong for Keir in the final however and won 3-0 to claim his first cadet title.

The Minor events were both played as single groups with Archie Imrie taking the boys’ title with an impressive unbeaten outing with Keir Niven-Duffy placed second while in the girls’ event Alana Thurston didn’t drop an end on the way to the title with Navya Jain pipping Ava Swift to runners up spot. It was great to see two youngsters, Paris Enoch from Aberdeen and Amelia Drozdowska from Shetland, competing in their first event.

In the days’ other events, Daniel Tibbetts defeated Gordon Muir to win the Senior Under 40s while David Niven claimed the Over 40’s following a five set battle against Gregor Ksiazek and Paul Monteith won the Over 60’s with Norval Strachan taking the runners up medal.

Finally, thanks go to Stewart McGowan for taking on the role of referee and Eric Brown, Neil Paterson and Joe Abbott who assisted at top table and with umpiring and photography. Thanks also to Gordon Muir for providing some additional action photos and to Phil McCallum and Tees Sport for once again supplying the tournament balls.