Scottish Croquet Association

Scottish Golf Croquet Championship 2014

26-27 July 2014, Meadows

The Scottish Golf Croquet Championship was relocated from Glasgow to Meadows because there were no entrants from the Glasgow Club and the Meadows lawns were available after the match against the Welsh Croquet Association was cancelled; and it was reduced in duration because some of the players preferred not to play two full days and in order to leave the lawns free for club play on Sunday afternoon.  The entry, initially small, was increased by these changes, and reached 10 players before falling back to eight through withdrawals.

An American block format was adopted, with provision for playoffs in case of a tie on games won in the block.  As it turned out, there was a four-way tie when the block was completed on Saturday evening, and the players were placed into a seeded two-round knockout, to be played on Sunday - in which Jane Morrison beat Bob Darling, Alan Wilson beat Fergus McInnes and it was Jane who went on to win the final.

The top players in the block according to the ranking system were Jane (handicap 2), Alan (3), Jamieson Walker (3) and Fergus (2), followed by Bob (5) and Jola Jurasinska (4), with Rachel Frith (11) and new Meadows member Chris Martin (12) completing the entry.  All the games between those in the first five and the other three went according to rankings, except that Jola beat Jamieson; but the games amongst the top five were a different matter, with each of them beating just two of the other four.  The game between Jane and Alan in the last round of the block was a critical one, since Jane would be the outright winner of the tournament if she won it, but in fact Alan managed a 7-6 win to ensure that he and Fergus and Bob remained in contention.  (There would have been a five-way tie, including Jamieson, but for his loss to Jola earlier in the day.)

The rules for the tournament decreed that the playoffs should be seeded firstly by net points, then by points scored, then by who beat whom, and finally (in case of a tie on all these criteria) by a shoot-out at the peg.  On this basis, Bob was clearly the top seed with +18 net points, aided by his 7-1 win over Jane, but Fergus and Alan were tied on net points (+14) and on points scored (46) and so the who-beat-whom rule was invoked and Fergus's 7-6 win over Alan made him the second seed and Alan the third, while Jane (net points +6) was seeded fourth.  Actually the distinction between second and third seed was only a matter of honour (and pedantry), since they had to play each other in one of the semi-finals, while the first and fourth seeds contested the other one.

With only two rounds of games to be played on Sunday, a leisurely start was agreed, and the semi-finalists reconvened about 11am.  The semi-finals and final all reversed the results of the block games, and went against the seeding, in keeping with the similarity of strength of all four players shown by the first day's results - Alan running a long hoop 13 to beat Fergus, Jane beating Bob 7-5, and Jane winning the final 7-4 over Alan, whose shooting had been good in the block games and semi-final but fell away a bit in the final.

So Jane received the Walker Golf Croquet Bowl and the commemorative medal accompanying it (one of a set presented by Amir Ramsis to the winners of all the World Croquet Federation member countries' national championships to mark the WCF's 25th anniversary) - as shown in the photograph below.

Fergus McInnes

Results

Block:

Semi-finals:
Jane Morrison beat Bob Darling 7-5
Alan Wilson beat Fergus McInnes 7-6

Final:
Jane Morrison beat Alan Wilson 7-4

Photographs

A hampered position at hoop 1 in the final.  (Alan eventually separated the balls by playing a hard angled shot with yellow, scattering black and blue to non-running positions, but it was Jane who won the hoop a few turns later.)

Jane with the bowl and the medal.