DK Way U19 September 2018 – Luke Davies

Luke Davies – DK Way U19

On the 1st of September I took part in the DK Way U19 Badminton England tournament. I decided to only play the Mens doubles so i could put all of my energy and focus into one discipline. For this tournament I partnered Cameron Bannister of Hertfordshire and despite us being 2nd seeds we felt confident within ourselves that if we played well enough that this was our tournament to lose. Our first round consisted of Esher Bahara & Alan Tu of Essex and due to it being me and Cameron’s first time partnering there were little chemistry and communication issue but however we played well enough to win in 2 straight with scores of 21-15 & 21-16. In our quarter-final we had Lukas Dimatteo and Luke Weston of Berkshire and again we played really well having around 10 point leads in both games but we relaxed to much and allowed our opponents back into the game but we manage to close out the match 21-17 & 21-17. Next in our semi-final we had to play 3/4 seeds Anthony Zhang and Alex Dillingham also from Berkshire, this was the game that we felt that everything finally clicked for us and despite them being a top quality who’ve played together many times over the years, we felt in control of the game and won the first game 21-17 and the second even more comfortably with a score of 21-14 to get us into the final. In the final we had to play 1st seeds Luke Griffiths of Surrey and Toby Dillingham of Berkshire, and it went just as well as the semi-final and we knew that if we just played attacking we could outpower them as their defence wouldn’t be able to handle the power and angle me and Cameron utilise when we attack from the rear-court. We controlled the game and were able to win with scores of 21-17 & 21-14 again to take the Gold! Overall it was a really successful tournament especially to win without dropping a game on our route to the Gold.