Prince’s Court brought home the silverware from Philadelphia in the Lord Percival Cup for the 2nd year in a row after a tough tournament. The Racquet Club of Philadelphia did a great job of hosting the tournament, the Black-Tie dinner was fabulous with dancing until the early hours and Steve Virgona, Rob Whitehouse and Barney Tanfield all did a great job of marking and organizing the tournament. 6 teams entered and were split into 2 Divisions of 3 teams: Division 1 – had teams from Tuxedo, Newilly (supposedly a mix of Newport and Philadelphia but also included Washington’s Charlotte Grassi teamed up with Mike Ziatyk from New York) and Philadelphia 1. Division 2 – the Prince’s Court team were joined by Philadelphia 2 (although the Dutch contingent of another PC member Steve Chapman partnered by Patrick Reuser were seconded to this team) and Philadelphia 3. The Washington team were made up of: 1st Pair – Michael Do & Ryan Carey (both in the winning team last year). 2nd Pair – Haven Pell & Al Clark. 3rd Pair – Temple Grassi & Ros Clark (Temple was also in the winning team last year). In the Division stage, we beat both the Philadelphia 2 & 3 teams 2-1. With the 1st & 2nd pairs winning both matches and the 3rd pair narrowly losing both. This meant that we made it through to the final on Sunday against the Division 1 champions, Philadelphia 1. In the final, first up were Temple & Ros against the hard hitting Matt Lapish and Baird Standish. This was a nail biter which went down to the wire and Temple & Ros held their nerve to sneak a win in the 3rd set and take a 1-0 lead for PC! Next up were Haven & Al- they were up against Melissa Grassi (on the PC winning team last year and now representing Philly!) and the fleet-footed Jack Graham. Haven & Al were always in command and took a convincing win to give PC an unassailable lead 2-0, the silverware stays in PC for another year! The last match was Michael & Ryan up against Brian Owens & Alec Monaghan. Maybe because the pressure was already off, maybe because Michael didn’t go to church to get a blessing like he did last year, maybe due to the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, maybe they were exhausted after their heroic efforts in winning their group matches – who knows, but the A game stayed away from our A team and they couldn’t pull off a win, so it finished 2-1 to Prince’s Court, but a great victory for the team