Scottish Croquet Association

Summer Weekend 2018

7-8 July 2018, Balgreen

Stefan Colling won the Summer Weekend with an outstanding performance in his first ever competition.

Playing off 22 Stefan was persuaded to enter the competition after a late withdrawal left 15 players. He wasn’t sure he would be good enough but impressed everyone with his straight hitting and use of bisques to set and play four-ball breaks, showing he had paid attention during his coaching sessions with Brian Durward.

In all 16 players contested the trophy at Balgreen CC with glorious weather, fast, tricky lawns and time limits of 3 hours + 3 minutes per bisque.

The first round saw wins for Roger Binks, Lorna Dewar, Joe Lennon, Alastair Burn-Murdoch, Jola Jurasinska, George Plant, Hamish Duguid and Stefan over Alan Wilson, Brian Durward, Rachel Frith, Brian Cosford, John Owen, Kathy Brown, Jamieson Walker and Rosemary Saunders Robertson. With the Egyptian system in operation winners played winners resulting in a whittling down of the field. Eventually only Stefan and George were undefeated at the end of Saturday making their match on Sunday the likely decider. In the "Battle of the Bandits" Stefan won convincingly and by winning his remaining games took the trophy with an impressive 130 on the Egyptian scoring system.

Handicap reductions were earned by Roger from 10 to 9, Alastair from 2 to 1½ and Stefan from 22 to 20. The Handicap Committee later awarded George and Stefan further reductions to 10 and 16 respectively.

Thanks go to Balgreen for hosting the event and particularly Hamish and Rosemary who spent Friday white-lining three lawns, marking out a fourth and making new hoop holes in baked, hard soil.

Alan Wilson, Manager

Results