Philip de Glanville Plays in First Tournament on Nailsea New Lawns

Philip de Glanville played in the C Class Advanced tournament at Nailsea on their newly re-laid lawns. This was the first tournament to be played since the work was carried out. Philips report follows below.

“Contrary to many people’s expectations, and thanks to an enormous amount of loving care from John Wallace and his hard-working team, the lawns at Nailsea were looking quite green and were just about playable for their C Class Advanced tournament held over the weekend 23rd/24th July. 12 people had booked to play, including Philip. The lawns were, of course, the main topic of conversation because they were difficult, to say the least – very slow, and though largely ‘true’ in that a ball driven along the long boundary would run pretty much along the yard line, some people had difficulty getting it to go that far! Moreover the surface was very hard and uneven in places, so that the ball rumbled and bounced as though being played over cobbles, and inadvertent jump shots when attempting forceful rushes were all too common. Most games were extremely low-scoring, very few were completed within the 3 hours allowed, and peels were almost as rare as hen’s teeth. Handicaps were clustered around 5-7 with a couple of people at 10 or 11, but the adverse playing conditions had a notable ‘levelling’ effect and Philip, very recently dropped to HC7, found himself winning his block on Saturday with victories against Brian Shorney (+11T), Margo Soakell (+12T) and Brian McCausland (+3T). He was very narrowly beaten in the semi-final on Sunday morning against Peter Dyke, who scored a final break of 3 hoops just after the timer went and won +3T. Philip’s 5th game was against David Hunt who put on a valiant late surge in the last few minutes but blobbed in Rover, giving our Bath representative a +1T win, a bottle of cider for the ‘greatest upset ‘ (winning against two HC5s) and 3rd place overall. The tournament was won by Nailsea’s remarkable James Galpin, who is already National Youth Champion, just pipping runner-up Peter Dyke (his coach) by one hoop in his final turn.”