ODIHAM tennis ace Ryan Golesworthy teamed up with James MacKinley to win the under-18 boys national title at the Junior National Tennis Championships held at the Nottingham Tennis Centre.

The tournament has been running since the 1920s, with John Lloyd, Sue Barker, Tim Henman, Andy Murray and Kyle Edmund having won titles in various age groups.

Sixteen year old Ryan Golesworthy was one of the elite players taking part in this year’s Championships.

The Hampshire ace suffered food poisoning on the eve of his quarter final match in the under-16s boys singles.

He put up a brave performance, fighting through to a third set before having to retire.

Golesworthy then played up an age group in the doubles as he joined Scotland's MacKinlay, which was their first ever tournament together.

MacKinlay was carrying a leg injury, and the unseeded pairing were a long shot to win a match.

However, they battled hard and along the way to the final beat the number two and three seeds.

In an intense final, Golesworthy and MacKinlay were up against the number one seeds, Matthew Clegg (Yorkshire) and Alexander Maggs (Herefordshire & Worcestershire).

In the first set at 4-4, 30-15, Golesworthy suffered a very heavy fall, later diagnosed as a potential broken bone in his hand.

Play was stopped for several minutes before Golesworthy returned, but was then unable to use his backhand at all and resorted to slicing every shot.

Whilst MacKinlay struggled with serving due to his leg injury, he still pulled off exquisite passing shots and anticipated returns with deadly accuracy. Golesworthy served powerfully and consistently and was clinical at the net. as they won the first set 6-4, but lost the second 6-3.

They then found themselves 7-4 down in a thrilling tie break before showing their resilience and staging a fight back to win 11-9, to become national champions.

Golesworthy said: "For us to beat the number one, two and three seeds in the nationals was amazing. In the final, with our illness and injuries, I had my doubts whether we’d even be able to make it onto court never mind to the end of the match. But we just dug deep and kept fighting. Given it was our first time playing doubles together the chemistry we had on court was awesome”.

MacKinlay added, “We didn’t just play for the trophy, we played for pride, passion, heart and more importantly each other”.