Lewis Williams has continued to demonstrate his career-best form, winning the IRTPA Satellite against Josh Smith in straight sets on Tuesday in Aiken.
The Satellite final pitted the unseeded Josh Smith against top seed Lewis Williams, the two being future colleagues at Newport. After opening the match with a bobble as is his trademark, Williams quickly settled into an underarm twist in a match that involved more positional play than brute forcing. He kept his error rate low, patiently waiting out the backhand exchanges for Smith to make a mistake. Williams took the first five games without much threat — no long, drawn-out deuce games even though Smith was regularly getting a couple of points each game. Smith took his sole game of the first set right at the end, but Williams was unperturbed, wrapping up the set moments later.
Smith’s second set started better, switching up the play to Williams’s forehand and eliciting a few errors while also looking for the targets more regularly. He took the first two games. Williams responded in kind, looking to take on the force more regularly as well and sliding dedans after dedans past Smith. He was particularly brutal on short chases, putting Smith immediately under pressure in the air. Williams won the last four games of the match to seal the title.
The win marks Williams’s first singles title since the 2025 Tambour Tour at Leamington. As World Number 9, he will go up against the World Number 8, Bryn Sayers, in the first round of the IRTPA Players’ Championship on Wednesday, with the first round of the competition splitting across Wednesday and Thursday.
Match results:
4:00 PM: Lewis Williams (1) def Josh Smith 6/1 6/3
Order of play for Wednesday (all times EDT):
12:15 PM: John Lumley (2) vs Pete Dickinson
1:45 PM: Ben Taylor-Matthews (4) vs Josh Smith
5:30 PM: Rob Fahey (6) vs Ben Dickinson
7:15 PM: Bryn Sayers (8) vs Lewis Williams