The Blewbury AC Advanced weekend tournament was held on 13-14 July and was graced by a selection of top players – five of the nine had minus handicaps, and three were minus 2. (Minus 3 is the lowest AC handicap that exists.)
Sophie McGlen, the manager, organised the tournament as a Swiss, which keeps the play moving along at a good pace. The weather was good, and the tournament was played in a great spirit.
As always, the players greatly enjoyed the lunch, provided on this occasion by Minty. We were especially keen to discover what the various fruits were in the dessert on the first day. They looked very exotic.
With such a high-class field I was expecting plenty of triple peels to be completed. In fact there were ten in the 27 games played, with several other attempts. However, I quickly realised that I had underestimated the top players. My first game was against Debbie Lines (the current women’s world champion). Debbie hit in and was well into a solid break when I realised that the balls were not where I expected them to be. Debbie was setting up to do a sextuple peel! Debbie had made six hoops, cross-wired my balls at hoop 1, and put her ball in the jaws of hoop 2 after placing her other ball north west of hoop 2. The idea is that I don’t get a lift with one of my balls, so I need to make a 25 yard roquet or run away and hide. While shooting and missing would give Debbie an even better position, running and hiding seemed that it would only delay the inevitable, so I tried the 25 yard shot – and hit! I now had a great position and I scored 9 hoops before making a leave. However, to no one’s surprise, Debbie hit in and won 26-9.
Other players attempted sextuples during the weekend, which is a testament to the abilities of the top players, and to the quality of our lawns. You don’t try doing a sextuple on a dodgy lawn. As the tournament was drawing to a close no one had succeeded in doing a sextuple peel, but in her last game, Debbie had completed five of the necessary peels and was carefully lining up her final peel. Everyone was watching by this time. Unfortunately the final peel failed, but Debbie still won the game.
At the conclusion of play, Debbie and Robin Brown were the only players to have lost one game each. Debbie had won one more game, but that was by dint of having played one more game than Robin. It was agreed that the fairest thing to do was that tournament should be decided by what I know as a Nottingham tie-break, where the players in contention play a two-ball break starting from corner 4 and going for hoop 4, then hoop 5, and so on. It is important that the player going second does not know how many hoops the first player has scored, so Robin went first, with Debbie around the corner, admiring our water butt. My experience of these tie breaks is that three hoops is a typical score and four hoops is likely to be a winning score. Not so for Robin and Debbie. Robin made 16 hoops on his two-ball break – a stupendous number. While Debbie did not know how many hoops Robin had made, she was surely conscious that it had taken quite a while. Debbie made six hoops, which is a great score, but a fewer than 16.
Well done to Robin – a worthy winner.
