These end of calendar year rankings take account of the West of England, Universities, and National Singles events. Normally I would publish a full rankings update following the WofE championships ahead of the National Singles, but moving house in recent months has diverted my attention a little, for which my apologies. However, I did actually rerank the top players as input to the National Singles and it emerged that Ed Kay was, at that point, top of the Singles rankings, hence his number one seeding at Cambridge. Congratulations to Ed on this achievement.
Like many, I followed some of the amazing contests in the Singles, particularly the Ellison/Tristao and Kay/Tristao battles, which were of the very highest quality. The fact that Dan emerged as narrow victor in both these matches not surprisingly restores his position at the top of the Singles rankings. Ed Kay is 2nd, with the losing semi-finalists Will Ellison and Charlie Brooks 3rd and 4th respectively. We look forward to further exciting contests between these rivals.
Richie Murby and Andrew Boyd had good results in the Singles which take them into the top 10, while Tom Watkinson and Alex Rew rise up into the top 20. Manchester qualifier winner Dave Fox moves up to 22. Julian Hanton, Jacob Brubert and Cameron Low all picked up points at the Universities event, while Christian Blackaby had some good wins in the National Singles qualifiers to move up the list.
We have three new entries in this Singles update — Jacob Brubert, Cameron Low, and Daniel Whitham.
At the top of the Doubles rankings Dan Grant retains a very slender lead over Will Ellison. Will and Ed Kay won the West of England doubles to close the gap, with Ed moving up to 3rd place ahead of Dan Tristao.
Universities Doubles finalist (with David Butler) Ben Jourdan moves up into the top 20. Archie McCreath, Ben Kirwan, Cameron Low and Daniel Whitham all had success in both the WofE and Universities Doubles and make good progress, while James Smith, Jeremy Manger, Sid Bhushan and Christian Blackaby all picked up useful points in the Universities event.
We have two new entries this time — Pete Kullavanijaya and Jack Malde.
I hope to do the next update in February following the North West, U25, and North of England championships.
Meanwhile, Happy Christmas everyone!
To see the full official rankings, just click on the link below.
Official RFA rankings (opens in separate window).
The official RFA rankings are prepared by Dave Hebden.