THE Alexandra Classic sponsored by the Lancashire Evening Telegraph and Scottish and Newcastle Retail, has this year gained valuable additional support from Royton Precision Engineers.

There's no doubt this tournament has developed into a major event ever since the competition was launched by the late Ken Heaps, who pioneered this event into what it is today.

It has been a boost to the calendar of events in the Blackburn area ever since its inception and continues to be so.

Nowadays sadly, there are no Summer Open Singles in the district which over the years has lost some great competitions that had a long history.

From day one the Alexandra Classic attracted an abundance of well known players besides several top local men which provided interesting and intriguing contests for the spectators and pundits alike.

All the sessions of qualifying heats for the 64 competitors are divided up into 16 groups of four players who compete down to one last 16 place. In other words, there are three 31 up games from scratch start every session.

The draw for individual games will take place on the green immediately before the start of play which does absolutely nothing to whet the appetite of local supporters who look to see one of our own men challenge a top named player.

Furthermore, I do not see any sense in drawing locals together or visiting players from the same area for that matter.

An intriguing draw in a top tournament has always been a pre-match talking point and a crowd puller, which ought to be set up for later rounds.

For the next four weeks there will be sessions of play on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings, 6.30pm start.

Matches this weekend line-up - Friday: M Wensley, A Ward, B Conroy, I McNeal.

Saturday: V O'Donnell, A Lowe, M Bretherton, A Caffney.

Sunday: R Pickup, J Rushton, M Greenwood, M Prescott.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.