GB no.3 Louie Harris admitted to a mixture of pride and frustration after what he called the “best performance of my career” at the FIP Euro Padel Cup Final 8.
Great Britain’s men finished third in Group A in La Línea de la Concepción, Cádiz, after a dramatic week facing Europe’s best padel nations.
Although they missed out on a place in the semi-finals, they gave eventual runners-up Portugal an almighty scare and beat Sweden 2-1 in their last match to finish on a high.
GB men’s captain Sandy Farquharson told The Padel Paper that his team had “exceeded expectations.” Although Louie broadly agrees with that summary, he was left with mixed feelings following his and Alex Loughlan’s heroic performance in the second group game against Portugal.
The Welsh-Scottish combo came within a whisker of defeating Portuguese world no.37s Miguel and Nuno Deus, holding a match point in the second set and a 4-1 lead in the third set, but ultimately going down 6-7, 7-5, 7-6 in over three hours.
“As a player, it’s very hard to be OK with losing even when you play well,” Louie told The Padel Paper. “To a certain degree, it’s almost worse because you know that you could and should have won.
“It’s not like we expected to beat them, but when you’re that close in a match there’s no reason why you shouldn’t win. It was a tough one to swallow but regardless, we were happy with the level we showed.
“It definitely has to be the best that I’ve played and certainly the best we’ve played as a pair.”
GB no.1 Christian Medina Murphy and no.2 Sam Jones later pushed Portugal’s top-string pair Pedro Perry and Afonso Fazendeiro to two tiebreaks as GB proved they could mix it with some of Europe’s best.
The following day against Sweden, Louie and Alex were outstanding again in beating Adam Olsson and Daniel Windah 7-6 7-6, before Christian and Alfonso Patacho wrapped up the victory, also via two tiebreaks.
“We have to be very happy and proud…”
“We have to be very happy and proud with the way we’ve played all week,” said Welshman Louie. “Looking at the results, we lost to Spain who won the event, we were very, very close to beating Portugal, who came second, then we’ve beaten Sweden who also almost beat Portugal.”
The 23-year-old is cautious when asked whether his and Alex’s performances in Cadiz will translate into the FIP circuit and their world rankings.
He explained: “It’s not quite as simple as, ‘You almost beat the Deus brothers, then beat Sweden, so we can now expect to do really well at FIPs’.
“Of course, our confidence is a bit higher off the back of it, but if you look at the coaching systems, how much they train and their ranking, their [Portugal’s] record is still far superior to ours.
“We’re not training full-time, we don’t play Premier Padel, we don’t play indoors and outdoors every week to build our experience. We need to stay realistic. We’re very happy but also well aware that if we were to play the Deus brothers 10 times, they’d probably win nine.”
Louie and Alex will link up again in a FIP or domestic tournament to tune up for the LTA Padel National Championships in Bristol from 4-7 December. “We both have work commitments so it’s not always easy,” said Louie, who coaches at Rocket Padel Beckton in East London to supplement his income from competitive padel.
Alex also reflected on the highly-charged Portugal match with mixed emotions: “We have to take the positives that on our day, if we play our best, we can compete with these top players and show that GB can do that. Hopefully in the next couple of tournaments it wouldn’t be impossible to look at trying to make a semi-final spot.”
GB’s women had a similar experience to the men at La Línea de la Concepción in the shadow of the Rock of Gibraltar. Libby Fletcher’s team lost to far stronger sides in France and Italy before earning a consolation victory against Germany to secure a third-placed finish in their group.
GB no.1 Aimee Gibson, who teamed up with GB no.3 Tia Norton in all three matches, told LTA Padel: “I think we can come away knowing that while those top countries are a little bit ahead of us at the moment, given how far we’ve come in such a short space of time, it’s only going to be up from here.
“We’ve already made so many quick improvements and I think we’re heading in the right direction.”
