The Connacht Closed Championships (Grade A) took place on Saturday 30th January in Galway Lawn Tennis Club. The event saw the best badminton talent from across Connacht come together for a full day of Singles, Doubles and Mixed competitions. Starting at 10am and finishing up just before 9pm, 44 players took part and between them played nearly 100 matches. The honours were spread across the province - Galway took the Ladies Singles, Sligo took the Mens Singles and Mens Doubles, Roscommon were victorious in the Ladies Doubles and a Galway / Sligo pairing won out in the Mixed Doubles. A small Mayo contingent managed a runners-up medal in the Ladies Singles.

There were many stand-out matches played, but the highlights were perhaps the Mens Singles and Mens Doubles finals. Both resulted in victories for Fintan Keown of Sligo Tennis Club, along with his partner Graeme Watt in the doubles, in two incredibly close games. In the Singles, Damian Hehir of GLTC had a 17-13 and 20-17 lead in the final set, but lost out to the Sligo man 23-21 in the decider. In the doubles, Mark Dolan and Joseph Keown brilliantly staged multiple comebacks in the 3rd set, reversing 10-3 and 15-12 deficits to take the final set to a nail-biting score of 18-18, before Fintan and Graeme clinched it. Fintan and his partner Catriona Farrell of Cortoon also took the Mixed Doubles, narrowly overcoming Bryan & Emer Lalor of GLTC in the final. And in the Ladies Doubles, Strokestown pairing Corina & Audrey Delaney were too strong for the GLTC pairing of Helen Sheehan and Claire Kenny, taking the final in straight sets. However, earlier in the day, Helen Sheehan won the Ladies Singles against a very promising Aine Leneghan from Newport in Mayo.

The semi-finals and finals are all listed below, and for a full round-up of all matches, see the attached spreadsheet (Connacht scoresheet.xlsx). Full-size photos attached (Finalists.zip and General.zip in the attachments), thumbnails at the bottom.