Experience will count for little in the final of the regional one men's singles final when the Shoe Clinic Wairarapa closed tennis championships draw to a close at the Masterton Tennis Centre next weekend.
The two combatants, Matt Spooner (Carterton) and Luke Atkinson (Masterton), are both well served with that important commodity, having rated among the province's top players for a number of years.
Spooner, who has also played at the top level in Wellington, justified his top seeding with comfortable wins in his preliminary round games on Saturday but it wasn't all plain sailing for second seed Atkinson who was forced to a tiebreaker in the second set of his encounter with clubmate Matt Bunny.
The men's regional one plate final will be between John McNab of Opaki and Alistair McWilliam of Gladstone and they had to fight to get that far. McNab won a third set tiebreaker 12-10 against the luckless Bunny and McWilliam had to go through the same process before beating Opaki's Chris Davidson.
It's still early days in the doubles with a number of games still to be played but the smart money would be on the final featuring Matt Spooner and Chris Schofield against Luke Atkinson and Tim Pickering.