St Clair remained unbeaten after two rounds of the President's Cup in Dunedin club tennis when it beat Balmacewen 5-1 on Saturday.
Eastern Harbour failed to join it by the the slimmest possible margin after going down to Taieri by one game on countback after rubbers and sets were level.
St Clair benefited from the absence of Balmacewen No1 Paddy Ou, who has a sprained ankle, and the players promoted struggled for the most part.
Mitchell Sizemore and Jeff Elliotte beat Henry Neas and Campbell Hodgson respectively - both scores were 6-1, 6-4 as the first-set winners took the pressure off at times in the second set, Elliotte in particular having to mount a comeback from 2-4 down.
Matt McCutcheon took the only point for his team when he beat Robin Versteeg 6-3, 7-5 in a match in which both players had leg problems, while Tony Ryder was too strong for Rileigh Fields dropping only two games.
Fields has been playing in the women's Tuesday night competition, which is now suspended in the absence of many students and, like several other women, had been playing in the men's 2 grade. However, she partnered McCutcheon to the brink of a doubles win before going down 7-6, 5-7, 7-10.
Taieri gained its first win of the season despite Harbour's Ryan Eggers, who is riding a wave and pushing for a higher ranking representative spot, beating Carlos Reid 6-3, 6-3 in the top singles and combining with Gavin Mockford for a 6-2, 6-1 win in the top doubles.
Mockford also continues to impress and added another scalp dropping only four games in beating Graeme Clarke, but Taieri's Darryl Paterson allowed Leon Jiang only one game and Phil Williams combined with Clarke to win the bottom doubles 6-1, 6-2.
German student Lucas Walser completed the damage when he beat William Muller 6-4, 7-5. The countback resulted in a 50-49 games margin to the Plainsmen.
- by Dennis Radford
