Edinburgh Tournament 2014

4-9 August 2014, Fettes College

The 2014 Edinburgh Tournament had a welcome resurgence of entries from the low numbers of the past few years, with 32 Association Croquet players (the most since 2009) plus four who were only in the Golf Croquet event.  It was particularly encouraging to see a good number of players entering from the first time, and most of them taking part in the singles as well as the doubles.  And four of these players, from different clubs, won trophies: Ian Hall, from Keswick, in the 4+ advanced singles, Charles Henderson (Crathes) in the 14+ handicap singles, new Meadows Club member Chris Martin in the main handicap doubles event, and David Young (Kinross) in the Y doubles.

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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.

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Scottish Open 2014

19-20 July 2014, Meadows

The entry for the Scottish Open was back up to strength this year after the rather weak turnout of eight players in 2013.  This time it had a full complement of 14 players, including three in the world's top 100, until Mark Ormerod had to withdraw with back trouble, leaving what was still quite a strong field of 13 including six minus players - Scottish residents James Hopgood, Campbell Morrison and John Surgenor and visitors David Maugham, Dave Nick and Sam Murray.  All the applicants were nevertheless accommodated, and the tail of the distribution stretched from Brian Murdoch (0) through Bryan Sykes, Jane Morrison, Martin Stephenson, Alan Wilson and Fergus McInnes to Bob Darling (4.5).

As usual the format was a seeded knockout with single games in the first round and best-of-three matches in subsequent rounds.  Three of the eight seeds - David Maugham, John Surgenor and Campbell Morrison - had byes into the second round, and all the others came through except that Jane Morrison lost to Fergus McInnes (18-22) in the only first-round game to go to time.  Thereafter there were no upsets, and at the end of the first day the finalists were identified as David Maugham and James Hopgood.  This left time on the second day for a best-of-five final, which was played to super-advanced rules by agreement of the players.

In the first game of the final, James went to 4-back, conceding a contact, from which David was able to make a leave, keep the innings, and subsequently peel and peg out James's ball and win +13tpo.  In the second game the roles were reversed, but it was David who won the three-ball endgame.  Game 3 was more one-sided, with James getting only one hoop.  Final score: Maugham +13tpo +7otp +25tp.

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