SPECTATORS had to wait until last night to watch home club players in action on day one of the LTA Lexus British Tour event at Ilkley Lawn Tennis & Squash Club.

And there were victories in the first round of men’s singles qualifying for Tom Horsley and Tom Horsfall but a battling defeat for Arun Bahia.

Due to persistent rain, matches were confined to the club’s five indoor courts and reduced to the Fast 4 format, with each set being the first to four games, with a tie-break at 3-3 if necessary, and a champions’ tie-break (first to 10 points with a lead of two points) to decide matters if matches went to set-all.

Horsley neutralised the power of 19-year-old Layne Gold (Essex) to win 0-4, 4-2, 10-5, while 16th seed Horsfall defeated Greece’s Ioannis Stamatopoulos, a student at Loughborough Univesrsity, in three sets.

Bahia saved three match points in the second set before falling to a 4-2, 3-4 (6), 10-4 loss to 19-year-old Josh Ward (Kent).

Horsley, 20 from Addingham, who has completed two years at university at Long Island in New York, admitted: “I thought that there was a danger that I might be out-served as he had a massive serve, but I felt that if I hung in there and got the ball back, I would be able to outlast him.

“I managed to get a break in the second set and then hold serve, and my tactics were good in the final set tie-break to play to his backhand as I found out that he couldn’t keep that shot down and I could come into the net and pick him off.”

Horsfall, 22, who has just finished a business and economics course at Leeds Beckett University and has been an Ilkley member for a decade, used his consistency and guile to defeat Stamatopoulos.

The Adel man admitted: “I didn’t start too well as I was a bit shaky and a bit rusty, but then I found that gear and found out his weaknesses and tried to capitalise on them.

“I try to be consistent, but I have not been playing much and hope to get into it a bit more.”

Bahia, 21, did well to take the match to a final set as he saved three match points on his way to winning the second-set tie-break.

However, the most unusual incident on the opening day of the Grade Two event was a player being defaulted.

Lancashire’s Luke Kelsall, who only came into the men’s singles as a late reserve, was thrown out after lashing at a ball and hitting opponent Albert Sitwell when the score was 8-8 in the champions’ tie-break which decided the final set.

“It was the end of a point and he had double faulted, and he lashed out at a ball and hit me in the groin area, but fortunately it hit my hand first,” said Sitwell, 19 from Northamptonshire.

“He was not apologetic afterwards either and said sarcastically ‘I hope that your hand gets better for your next match’.”

Unfortunately for Kelsall, tournament referee Peter Grimsdale was watching behind the stop netting on one of Ilkley’s indoor courts and marched onto court to administer the default.

“It is only the seventh or eighth time I have had to do that in 31 years,” he said.