Bath Short Lawns Tournament

The weather was very kind to us for the last event of this season, held on four half-lawns in lovely warm sunshine on Sunday 2nd October, despite everyone turning up prepared for rain and much cooler conditions.
Eight people signed up for this year’s tournament, so the format for the day was to play in two blocks, with a fourth and final game between players from each block, ranked according to their success in the preceding games.
Roger Hayes won Block A, after three quite close games against Sue Duncan (10:8), Tony Curson (10:6) and Lynne Passfield (14:11). Martin Alabaster stormed through Block B, with three well-crafted wins against Tony Jackson (14:8), Andy Wagstaff (13:8) and Margaret Murray (14:6).
The finals were hotly contested, and it was a pleasure to see that, by the end of the day, everyone taking part had won at least one game. Andy Wagstaff impressed as a Short Croquet novice with two good wins, nicely justifying his SC handicap of 8. Sue Duncan (SC9), and Tony Jackson (SC6), also won two games, Roger (SC2P) won three, and Martin (SC4) emerged as overall champion, with an emphatic fourth win (14:0) over Roger in the final.
It was a really good day’s croquet with which to round off the summer. Martin’s handicap has come down to SC 3.5 as a result of his success in this format. He, Lynne and Andy will join Neil Pinker to represent us as the ‘Bath Salts’ in Div 3 of the Short Croquet Tournament at Budleigh which is scheduled for Saturday 8th October.