Ian Williams emerged as a worthy winner of the first ever World Match Racing Tour event to be held in the UK, the Royal Southern Match Cup 2015. But this ISAF Grade 2 event posed a real scare for Ian from the Club’s own Academy member Mark Lees in the semi-finals.
Five-time World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) champion and the current world number one, Williams had kept a 100 per cent win record until he ran into Lees in the first of the knock-out series.
Lees took the first race and an early lead in the best-of-five, before Williams hit back taking the next two. In a declining and shifty Solent breeze, and despite a coming together at the top mark, Lees kept the tie alive with a win to level the scores.