Edinburgh Tournament 2018 - Day 6
A wet start today but the rain disappeared by 10.00 and the wind didn’t seem quite as cold - or perhaps we are just getting used to it. A mixed bag of finals and semi-finals in AC was played on lawns 1 and 2 while the golf croquet event took place on lawns 3 and 4.
First up were Kevin Wright and Hamish Duguid in the play-off for block winner in Event 3. A close match was finally won by Hamish getting the golden hoop after time was called and Kevin had missed a roquet by the narrowest of margins. The 17-16 result means that Hamish will play George Plant in Saturday’s final.
Event 4 actually had its final today: Kathy Brown played Brian Cosford and won 26-3. Congratulations to Kathy, still a relatively inexperienced player, and commiserations to Brian who, as he said, simply didn’t bring his best self to his first game of the day.
The ongoing open singles second block saw Alastair Burn-Murdoch claim yet another victory to earn his place in the final against Jane Morrison. Apologies to Alastair for failing to mention that his handicap came down to 1 yesterday. And to think it’s only four years since he was in the beginners’ course at the Edinburgh Club. From high 20s handicap to 1 in four years is pretty good going. In other games in this block Andrew Symons narrowly beat John Surgenor but lost to James Hopgood. James attempted to set up a sextuple peel, which didn’t work out, but he then completed a triple peel to win. In true modest fashion he said afterwards, “It wasn’t a perfect triple peel but sometimes the less than perfect ones are more interesting.” Well, perfect or not it’s the only triple to be completed this week - so far.
John Surgenor was the protagonist in the week’s most amazing incident. Believe this if you can - I’m not sure I do, but I was told that John played a cut rush from corner 2 on lawn 1 and one of the balls shot up the ‘grass’ ramp that’s used for getting the lawnmower onto the lawn and disappeared under Lorna Dewar’s car. A search under the car and nearby failed to produce it. Puzzlement all round. Then John said, “Lorna, just put up the bonnet of your car, will you.” And lo and behold, there was the ball snugly nestled in the engine compartment! Now either this story is worth its place in Scottish legends alongside Nessie or someone had a bet they could get ‘Scoop’ to put it in today’s report, in which case - they’ve won.
Back to the serious stuff. After so many narrow wins and at least three golden hoop games it was a surprise to see the 5Y compensatory doubles final won by +26. Victory went to Brian Cosford (who’d found his form by now) and John-Paul Moberly, playing against George Plant and David Houston. As not all finalists in this event could make it on Friday or Saturday the Manager calculated total points won over the series of games and awarded Event victory to Brian and John-Paul. John-Paul left soon after, which is a relief to my word processor which insists on printing his name as ‘Soberly’.
So the line-up for Saturday is:
Event 1 final: Jane Morrison v Alastair Burn-Murdoch.
Event 3 final: Hamish Duguid v George Plant
Event 5 doubles final: Darling & Hawke v Dewar & Malcolm
Event 6X final: Lorna Dewar v Hamish Duguid
Event 6Y final: probably Brian Cosford v Rosemary S Robertson
Finally, the golf croquet event brought in a whole new lot of players, mainly ‘Meadows in exile’. There were eight players in all and as all played all it took most of the day to get through the seven rounds of matches. In almost the last match of the day George Geis was pitted against Bruce Bennet. If Bruce lost he would play a final against Bill Strachan, but he won and so claimed the trophy with 7 wins from 7 games. Congratulations to him and we look forward to watching his progress as he spreads his talents to the AC game next year, when retirement beckons.
A more immediate thing that we look forward to is the lunchtime barbecue on Saturday, but if you haven’t booked your place - too bad. You’ll have to munch your sandwiches at the edge of the throng while the carnivores vie with the veggies.
Allan Hawke
