Amber Valley awarded £5,970 across seven 3.5 and 4.0 competitions at Derby Arena. William Cheer and Khayra Hazly won two titles each, while the graded draws delivered tight finals, repeat finalists and hard-earned bronze medals.

Key Takeaways

  • William Cheer won men’s 4.0 with Adrian Henley and mixed 4.0 with Sarah Mitchell.
  • Khayra Hazly won women’s 4.0 with Nikki Kelana Chia and mixed 18+ 3.5 with Ian Lim.
  • Amber Valley awarded £5,970 across seven separate 3.5 and 4.0 competitions. The distribution by finishing position has not been supplied.
  • Harry Mounsey and George Raiswell won the closest gold match of the weekend, beating Adam Gross and James Gavuzzi 11–10, 11–9 in men’s 3.5.

William Cheer finished Amber Valley’s second weekend with two gold medals and two different partners. Khayra Hazly did the same. Their results give the graded competitions at Derby Arena their clearest sporting thread, though the reason this weekend warrants attention extends beyond the double champions. Amber Valley Pickleball Club offered prize money in its 3.5 and 4.0 competitions, as well as the Open draws contested a week earlier.

The opening weekend in Stourbridge produced four Open champions and raised a question about Amber Valley’s two-venue approach: could its prize fund, officiating and playing format make a club-run event stand out in a busier British tournament calendar? Derby, on 26 and 27 September, supplied the other half of that answer. The seven completed graded brackets provided for this article show an emphatic men’s 4.0 final, a men’s 3.5 final decided by three points across two games, and a mixed bronze match that went to 12–10 in its decider.

Amber Valley awarded £5,970 in prize money across the seven separate 3.5 and 4.0 competitions, according to the figure supplied for the Derby weekend. That is an actual total for the graded draws, distinct from the anticipated overall prize fund of around £18,000 that the club advertised before its two weekends. Under its published prize schedule and entry conditions, a graded gold medal carried a proposed £375 per pair at full capacity, with £250 for silver and £125 for bronze. It also listed returns for fourth and places five to eight. Open gold was advertised at £1,000 per pair. The final distribution of Derby’s £5,970 by finishing position has not been supplied, so the published per-pair figures should not be treated as confirmed payments.

That qualification is essential, but the decision to offer cash across the graded field still matters. Amber Valley explicitly said that it wanted its prize fund to reward players below 4.5. The Derby weekend gave that ambition a sporting test, with titles and podium places available to players across men’s, women’s and mixed doubles.

Cheer wins with Henley, then Mitchell

Cheer’s first title came alongside Adrian Henley in men’s 4.0. They beat Jacob Glover and Mark Timms 11–2, 11–0 in the final, the most emphatic gold-medal score in the supplied Derby brackets. Cheer and Henley had reached it with a 15–4 semi-final win over Joel Stewart and Matt Brindle, while Glover and Timms beat James Horne and Darren Wilmott 15–11 in the other half of the draw.

The final score leaves little doubt about the margin in that match, although it cannot describe what happened within the rallies. Stewart and Brindle, meanwhile, recovered from their semi-final loss to take bronze against Horne and Wilmott. They won the opener 11–8, lost the second game 3–11 and secured the deciding game 11–7, giving the men’s draw a more closely fought finish for third place.

Cheer returned for mixed 4.0 with Sarah Mitchell. Jamie Pittock and Georgina Fellows took eight points from them in a 15–8 semi-final, before Cheer and Mitchell beat Oliver Adams and Tiana Cotterill 11–2, 11–7 for gold. Adams and Cotterill had advanced past Le Wei Tan and Nikki Kelana Chia 15–7, leaving Tan and Chia to contest bronze against Pittock and Fellows.

That bronze match supplied one of the weekend’s strongest recoveries. Tan and Chia lost its opening game 3–11, levelled the contest 11–5 and won the decider 12–10. Chia already had women’s 4.0 gold alongside Hazly, so her comeback in mixed gave her a second podium finish with a different partner.

Cheer’s titles did not simply repeat the same partnership or the same pattern. He and Henley finished men’s 4.0 with a particularly one-sided final. He and Mitchell faced a sterner semi-final in mixed before establishing a clear advantage in the championship match. Across those two draws, Cheer was the weekend’s male double champion.

Hazly’s titles cross the grading boundary

Hazly and Chia took women’s 4.0 gold with an 11–1, 11–5 win over Laura Blatherwick and Lucy Croucher. Alice Clarke and Julie Griffiths claimed bronze, beating Lynn Wood and Deb Finney 11–10, 11–7. The narrow opening game in that bronze match is worth retaining alongside the straight-games result, since the first portion of the contest could scarcely have been closer.

Hazly’s second gold came with Ian Lim in mixed 18+ 3.5. Listed in that bracket under her full name, Khayra Nafeesa Binti Mohd Hazly, she and Lim beat Julia Sargent and Leigh Taylor 11–0, 11–4 in the final. Their semi-final against Martha Smith and Chris Bruce finished 15–3. Sargent and Taylor reached the final with a 15–11 win over James Hall and Ruby Rooke, who then took bronze against Smith and Bruce, 11–8, 11–5.

Hazly’s two final scores were decisive, but the change of partner and category is part of the achievement. Her women’s title came at 4.0 with Chia, her mixed title at 3.5 with Lim. Amber Valley’s published rules permitted a player to enter gendered doubles at one level and mixed doubles at another where eligible. The organiser also set DUPR limits for graded entries and said it would check ratings ahead of the event. Those rules have particular weight where cash is offered in rating-limited divisions, although the brackets do not show how individual eligibility decisions were handled.

The players around Hazly give the Derby results continuity. Chia followed their women’s title with mixed 4.0 bronze. Sargent reached the mixed 3.5 final after taking silver in women’s 3.5. Mitchell, Sargent’s partner in that women’s event, then won mixed 4.0 alongside Cheer. These appearances connect the draws without obscuring the individual partnerships responsible for each result.

Noble and Floyd hold on in women’s 3.5

Olivia Noble and Gina Floyd won women’s 3.5 by beating Mitchell and Sargent 11–10, 11–5. They had advanced with a 15–1 semi-final win over Ruth Newsome and Susannah Jolly. Mitchell and Sargent defeated Kayley Arkesden and Rachel Smith 15–6 in the other semi-final, while Arkesden and Smith recovered to take bronze against Newsome and Jolly, 11–8, 11–7.

The 11–10 first game gives Noble and Floyd’s final a different complexion from the women’s 4.0 title match. Almost nothing separated the pairs before the eventual champions pulled further clear in the second. The bracket does not reveal who led at any stage or which pair had a chance to finish the opening game first, but it does show why the final should not be reduced to a routine straight-games win.

Mitchell and Sargent each found another route into the weekend’s story. Mitchell converted her next final into mixed 4.0 gold with Cheer, while Sargent reached the mixed 3.5 final with Taylor. Their silver together was one result within two busy schedules, and the crossover shows how much a graded tournament can ask of players entering both gendered and mixed doubles.

Three points separate the men’s 3.5 finalists

Harry Mounsey and George Raiswell beat Adam Gross and James Gavuzzi 11–10, 11–9 for men’s 3.5 gold. Their semi-final had been far more comfortable, a 15–3 win over Varun Pradhan and Charlie Morris. Gross and Gavuzzi reached the final by defeating Eric Lee and Ian Chong 15–7.

The championship match was the closest gold final in the supplied Derby results by aggregate margin. Mounsey and Raiswell won one game by a point and the other by two, leaving Gross and Gavuzzi within reach throughout on the scoreboard. That is enough to convey the contest without inventing a decisive rally or a shift in momentum that the bracket cannot document.

Lee and Chong then had to come from behind to take bronze. Pradhan and Morris won their opening game 11–8, but Lee and Chong responded 11–6, 11–5. Between the close title match and a three-game bronze contest, men’s 3.5 delivered two quite different tests for the pairs still competing for a podium place.

Amber Valley’s prize structure lends those finishing positions a further dimension. Its full-capacity schedule proposed awards for graded gold, silver and bronze medallists, as well as smaller returns further down the knockout standings. The confirmed £5,970 total establishes the scale of the money awarded across Derby’s seven competitions, although the amount received by each pair has not been supplied.

Adams and Parfitt claim the 45+ title

Matthew Adams and Tamara Parfitt won mixed 45+ 3.5, beating Elizabeth McCrae and Malcolm Kirkbride 11–5, 11–3 in the final. Adams and Parfitt had defeated Jason Parry and Rachel Adams 15–4 in the semi-final, while McCrae and Kirkbride beat John Guest and Pauline Basterfield by the same score.

McCrae and Kirkbride had survived a much tighter match earlier, edging James Temby and Vanessa Di Cuffa 15–14 in the quarter-final. Parry and Rachel Adams completed the podium with an 11–2, 11–2 bronze win against Guest and Basterfield. That sequence gave the finalists contrasting routes: McCrae and Kirkbride had to escape a one-point quarter-final, while Adams and Parfitt finished their last two recorded matches by clear margins.

The age-group result belongs within the broader prize-money account. Amber Valley’s published full-capacity schedule included 45+ mixed alongside 18+ men’s, women’s and mixed competitions in its graded categories. Its stated intention to reward performances below Open level therefore extended across age as well as rating.

What Derby adds to the Amber Valley story

Derby produced two double champions, though its seven supplied brackets tell more than two stories. Cheer and Henley dominated their final, while Mounsey and Raiswell had to finish two narrow games. Noble and Floyd edged a first game 11–10 before pulling away. Tan and Chia overcame a heavy opening-game defeat for bronze, and McCrae and Kirkbride survived a 15–14 quarter-final on their way to silver.

The Open weekend in Stourbridge showed that Amber Valley could attract a compelling top-end field. The graded weekend showed the breadth of competition beneath it. The club’s prize plan was part of that proposition, backed by published rating rules, a promised minimum of five matches per division and referees from the quarter-finals onwards at Derby. Those details describe the organiser’s planned format and offer; the supplied brackets establish the sporting outcomes.

The financial picture is now clearer for Derby: £5,970 was awarded across the seven graded competitions. The individual awards remain unspecified, and the advertised overall fund for both weekends was conditional on entries. Even with that distinction, the club’s decision is plain: prize money reached the 3.5 and 4.0 divisions as well as the higher-ranked Open competitions. For the competitors at Derby, their graded draws were the main event of the weekend. Cheer and Hazly won twice, while the close finals, repeat finalists and bronze-match recoveries gave the rest of the field a substantial part in the story.

Further Reading

Photo of Chris Beaumont

Chris Beaumont

Founder and Editor-in-Chief
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Beaumont is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of World Pickleball Magazine, published by World Pickleball Media Ltd. He follows the global game closely, reporting on news, developments, stories and tournaments from all five continents. He also hosts the World Pickleball…

View All Articles →