Scottish Croquet Association

Glasgow Open 2016

16-17 April 2016, Kelvingrove

John Surgenor won the Glasgow Open.  The weather was a mixture of sun and snow on Saturday, high winds and rain with fluctuating temperatures on Sunday.  We had a visitor from Ireland William (Bill) Hadden who learned to play in Australia but now plays at Carrickmines in Dublin.

Seven players contested the event handicaps ranged from -½ to 11.   With the odd number and being the first event on our calendar this meant play was generally slow with a lot of waiting over the weekend.   However Bill beat Alan in just over an hour and John, who was waiting for a game, then played Alan and also finished well before the other two games which went to time.  That was the last of the expedient play.

Alan and Bill were the only two players to complete their quota of games over the weekend. John and Bill (6) had a close game. John went round to 4-back from a leave that Bill had left for himself.  Bill missed the lift; John carried on, jawsed the peelee en route to hoop 2, peeled before scoring hoop 3, jawsed the penultimate hoop before hoop 4, and made the peel before running hoop 6.  All was going well but then he stuck in 1-back from about 9 inches trying to get a forward rush. Bill who was still on 1 and 1 then took his ball to the peg but missed the peg off and conceded a contact.  John took his contact and attempted to peg off Bill's ball but also missed.  At this point the game was pegged down as the parkies were shutting up shop. We resumed on Sunday morning.  Bill missed his first shot and John got another chance of removing Bill's ball.  He did this and decided to make it a two ball game: 1 against 1-back.  John eventually won having a bit more experience at this type of ending although Bill managed to get to 4-back with a break of five hoops before John pegged out +4.

After a lot of waiting John played his fourth game only to have to wait over an hour for Martin to finish his fourth.  This happened with just over two hours to go before we would have had to stop. With the cold temperature and high winds it was decided to call it a day. Joe and Alistair abandoned their last game about an hour in. Everyone enjoyed the weekend despite the weather.

John Surgenor