Phyllis Court '2+' beat holders Roehampton with a dramatic last hoop victory in the National Inter-Club ‘Murphy’ Shield today.

Results don't come any closer than this 4-3 victory for the home side who completed ‘the doubles’ over their guests having knock-ed Roehampton out of the top tier Inter-Club Championship in May.

In the morning matches, Phyllis Court's Dianne Browne and Andy Jones won doubles match in three games over Roehampton's Andrew R Wilson and Mark Green 7-4, 5-7, 7-4.

However, the first-round singles were shared with straight games victories by Raghu Iyer for Phyllis Court and Trevor Campbell for Roehampton over Mike Tumath and Patricia Mulcahy 7-4, 7-5 and 6-7, 4-7 respectively.

This gave Phyllis Court a 2-1 lead at lunch but Roehampton fought their way back into the tie with Campbell defeating Iyer 2-7, 7-6, 3-7 and Green winning over Browne 3-7. 3-7 for a short term 2-3 team lead.

Phyllis Court captain Jones restored parity in the match at 3-3 when he recorded a win in three games over counterpart Wilson 7-3, 6-7, 7-3 which left just the Mulcahy v Tumath match to decide the whole fixture and their match was incredibly close.

By the time Jones had completed his rubber, Tumath had won the first game 6-7, Mulcahy had taken the second by the same score and their deciding third game was locked at 5-5.

Mulcahy took hoop 11 for a 6-5 lead but couldn't prevent Tumath levelling at 6-6 however the Phyllis Court player had the crucial first approach strokes to the last hoop 13.

Mulcahy made good use of that advantage and put both her balls into scoring positions, before Tumath blocked the hoop, entering from the non-scoring side with a shot from more than 20 meters.

When Mulcahy's first jump shot at hoop 13 failed, it looked like the tables had turned against her but her second shot cleared Tumath’s jawsed ball and follow it through the hoop to score for the win, bringing Phyllis Court team victory by 4 matches to 3.

Phyllis Court captain Andy Jones said afterwards "We were fortunate to have an experienced tournament player standing over that last shot. Patricia knows well that the secret to a pressure shot is that there is no secret. You just have to take your time, go through your process and give yourself the best chance of making a good shot. Sometimes you’ll hit and sometimes you’ll miss, but luckily for us, on this occasion, Patricia absolutely nailed it."

Phyllis Court will now face either East Dorset or Sussex County in the semi-final.