The 2023-2024 SA State Singles Championship was held at the Novar GardensPetanque Club on 28 April 2024:
- Open Singles Champion: Van Nguyen
- Women’s Singles Champion: Paula Pulestn
The 2023-2024 State Singles Championships were held at Novar Gardens in perfect autumn conditions. The temperature was mild but there was plenty of sunshine.
The Women’s competition was again very well attended, with eighteen players participating this year. The competition was tight and no-one got through the whole day unscathed, but rising to the occasion when it mattered most was Paula Puleston who took the trophy. Congratulations go to Paula for her first state title. Also performing strongly was Jean May, who took the runner up gong for the second year in row.
The Open championship was hotly contested too. In fact, in both the Women’s and the Open, only one player managed to win all five games in the qualifying rounds. Remarkably, in each case, they both fell at the first hurdle in the knockout phase. The last pair standing at the end of the day were two of our finest exponents of the game, Van Nguyen and Vincent Bulone. In this battle of the big V’s, the victory went to the virtuoso, Van, with the valiant Vincent vanquished.
Van’s win gives him a record of two titles and twice runner up from the four times he has competed in this event. That’s pretty impressive, but it has far greater historical significance than that. It makes Van the first and only player to concurrently hold all four SA state titles – in Singles, Doubles, Triples and Mixed Doubles. To cap it off, he has won each of these events in the space of a single season, along with four gold medals from the five Interclub rounds held to date. An awesome record!
Special thanks to Brett Williams for single-handedly taking on the umpiring duties and to the hard-working Novar Gardens crew for hosting the event.
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