Scottish Croquet Association

19 May 2012, Meadows

Encouragingly, this year we had thirteen competitors compared with only five in 2011. It was very pleasing to able to welcome several new faces, as well as some returning players, to the Tournament. A special mention should be made of Anne Prees and Lesley van Vliet who play croquet part of each year in South Africa but who summer in Scotland and have now joined Meadows Croquet Club.

The intention had been to run the Tournament as two American blocks plus a final deciding round, but a last minute entry resulted in the format being altered to an Egyptian with six rounds. This did appear to work well and the allotted 50 minute time limit allowed most games to finish within this, resulting in each round starting at approximately one hour intervals.

Inevitably, there was some waiting for all games in a round to finish. But I was most fortunate to have Jane Morrison and others keeping the competition progressing when I was on the lawn. Asking the entrants to maintain pre-printed result sheets proved to be invaluable.

A welcomed innovation this year was the use of personalised bisque tokens. At the start of a game the lower handicap player handed an appropriate number of tokens to their opponent who then used them during the game, as and when they wished, to ‘buy’ a free turn.

For games which had not finished within the time, the game then continued by the taking of a mandatory further eight strokes during which time no remaining bisques could be used. If the game was tied at this point, the winner was the one who ran the next hoop, with any unused bisques only becoming live again after the ninth stroke. In the games where this ruling applied, the players appeared to like this form of ending.

After the first three rounds, Jamieson Walker, John Graham and Janice Duguid were edging clear of the field. However, in the next round Janice lost to Jamieson whilst John again won his game. Statistically, Jamieson and John should have played against each other in the next round but the manager decided to defer that pairing until the final round in the hope that they would both either win, or lose, their 5th round ties. As it happened they both won and it was fitting that the deciding game for the trophy should be played in the final round.

John must be congratulated for playing so consistently well but it was Jamieson who won the day and took home the trophy.

Following hard on the heels of reducing his AC handicap to 8, Jamieson has now also reduced his GC handicap from 4 to 3. Other handicap announcements are listed below but a special mention must be made of John’s well deserved reduction from 8 to 6.

Hamish Duguid

Results

127 Jamieson Walker (4)  bt. M Smith 7-6; A Adam 7-6; A Prees 7-2; J Duguid 7-4; J Morrison 7-3; J Graham 7-5
117 John Graham (8) bt. G Geis 7-4; A Prees 7-1; J Morrison 7-6; M Smith 7-5; J Jurasinska 7-4
110 Roger Binks (8) bt. A Adam 6-4; L v.Vliet 7-4; H Duguid 6-5; J Jurasinska 7-5
109 Janice Duguid (8) bt. R Binks 7-3, A Adam 7-4; J Jurasinska 7-2; M Smith 7-2
103 Jane Morrison (2) bt. R Binks 7-4; J Duguid 7-4; H Duguid 7-5
101 Jola Jurasinska (5) bt. B Cosford 7-5; L v.Vliet 7-5; A Prees 7-5
101 Anne Prees (7) bt. J Morrison 7-6; L v.Vliet 7-5; M Smith 7-4
92 Alasdair Adam (7) bt. G Geis 7-5; L v.Vliet 7-3
91 Brian Cosford (5) bt. A Adam 7-6; L v.Vliet 7-4
91 Malcolm Smith (5) bt. G Geis 7-2; H Duguid 7-3
90 Hamish Duguid (4) bt. B Cosford 7-5; G Geis 7-4
90 George Geis (7) bt. B Cosford 7-6; B Cosford 7-5
80 Lesley van Vliet (6) bt. H Duguid 7-5

Automatic handicap changes:-

J Walker was 4 now 3
L v.Vliet was 6 now 7

After consultation with the SCA GC Handicapper, the following changes apply:-

John Graham’s provisional handicap of 8 has now been reduced to 6.
Janice Duguid’s handicap has been reduced from 8 to 7.
The provisional handicaps for A. Adam, M. Smith and R. Binks have now been adopted as official.