Author: Peter Allan

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.

“You really shouldn’t need a degree in jurisprudence and combinatorial maths in order to be able to decide who has won a croquet tournament” were my thoughts around 6pm on Sunday afternoon. But I am getting a head of myself.

On 26 & 27 August 2023, Blewbury hosted the annual super-B advanced AC tournament. Eight players had signed up, but unfortunately Richard Peperell came down with a bad cold so we were down to seven. I will claim that half of the original eight were international players. We have played in Corfu – surely that counts!

An odd number is always unfortunate since it means that one player has to sit out in each round. Robert Upton opted for the lie-in on the Saturday morning and Beatrice McGlen for the early bath on Sunday evening. The rest of us took pot luck. One lucky player would avoid the sit-out and get their fully money’s worth. By the luck of the draw, this turned out to be David Warhurst.

The weather on Saturday was showery with sunny spells and fortunately the showers never stopped play. I got off to a good start by beating Mike Hedge (0) and after an excellent lunch provided by Sandy and Philippa, I beat David Warhurst (-1) and followed this up by beating Ian Draper (1.5). No one was more surprised than me to find that I was in the lead at the end of the first day with three wins out of three games, although I did note that Robert Upton was also undefeated on two wins from two games. Dare I hope that this was “my weekend”?

I had the sit-out slot on Sunday morning, so I spent the time watching my next two opponents looking for any tactical weaknesses on their part. Sadly I found none.

Fortified by a scrumptious lunch from Minty, I beat Andrew Dutton (1). Was the dream really on?

In the last round I played against Robert Upton (2), who I have played several times before. I think we are about 50-50 on wins, but surely I am on form and I would be able to beat him. As the game progressed things were not looking so rosy. I made a good start, but then made a hash of hoop 3, letting Robert in, who took full advantage. For the next two hours, it was mostly Robert making good progress with me making a few hoops here and there. This is where the jurisprudence and maths comes in. It was looking like Robert would beat me and if David won his last game there would be three players with only one loss, but different number of wins, and each of us would have beaten the other. The tournament regulations do cover this situation, but in language that I can only describe as something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike English. To help the aspiring tournament director, there is a worked example. This is where the maths comes in and it is best not attempt to follow this on your mobile phone in the middle of a tournament when you are desperately trying to win your last game!

As I walked on to the lawn with about ten minutes of play left on the clock I was ten hoops behind. Things looked dire, but I had a reasonably easy hit-in and I decided to just do the best I could in the remaining time. If I could go from hoop 3 round to peg with red and peg out I would be one point ahead. A fiendish leave would give me a win – and no headache on deciding the winner. So that is what I did. A carefully crafted split shot after hoop 3 gave me a crucial rush to bring the pivot into play and after that it was just careful play to keep the four-ball break tidy. Simples! Plus one on time, for a 100% record over the weekend.

It was very gratifying to win my first advanced AC tournament. I will be putting the trophy (an engraved glass) to good use by adding a smidgen of single malt and studying those tournament regulations in the peace of my own home.

That describes both the weather at the Short Croquet tournament that we hosted on Saturday 5 August, and sadly, my play. The vagaries of the weather are best illustrated by two pictures of Linda Shaw (courtesy of Carol Jamieson, who helped with innumerable tasks during the day).

Ten players contented the tournament over five rounds and everyone enjoyed themselves, playing the games in a friendly, but competitive, spirit. The field was quite strong, with four out of the ten having a handicap of one or more peels. If that means nothing to you, think ‘minus handicap’.

At the lunch break, an excellent salad prepared by Minty, there was little to separate the players, but as we began the final round, three players were still in contention.

Once the final scores were in, the winner was Dave Kibble, with five wins from five games. Paul Wolff was second with four wins.

I am sure that many of the players have already ‘pencilled in’ next year’s fixture in their croquet calendar.

I was watching the AC World Championship on YouTube yesterday and I was struck by a comment that Harry Fisher made while commentating on Reg Bamford’s play in his second game against Aston Wade. Harry said “when things are going well, the roll shot does not exist”.

What he meant by this is that if you can place the balls so that your striker’s ball does not need to move a long way, then this helps to increase the accuracy of your shots, which makes your play much easier.

Of course, sometimes you need to play a roll shot, but things are so much easier if you can do without them. It is worth aspiring to achieve that.

The weekend of 15-16 July saw the AC advanced tournament being contested on our lawns. The tournament attracted a high quality field, with 6 out of the 8 players having a minus handicap.

The weather promised to be pretty dire, with rain and 40 mph winds forecast for Saturday afternoon, but in the end, we only lost about 20 minutes to rain over the whole weekend.

All those who had lunch commented very favourably on the high standard of the catering, so well done David Long (Saturday) and Phillipa, ably assisted by Sandy (Sunday). Your culinary skills were greatly appreciated.

The games were contested in a friendly spirit and all players won at least one game. The clear winner was Philip Eardley (far right in photograph), who won all six of his games. He had a net hoop score of 102, which is an average result of +17. Very impressive!

Several players attempted to do a triple peel, and while some players achieved three peels in one turn, no one succeeded in pegging out in the same turn.

After I award the trophy to Philip, he said that he was very impressed with the quality of our lawns. I find that first-time visitors often say this.

There was one mishap on Sunday. Mike Porter came into the club house saying “I finally managed to hit something”. Unfortunately it was one of our coffee mugs.

We like to play croquet on a sunny day. Sometime is it cloudy, or even raining, but playing in almost pitch darkness seems to be taking things a bit far. However, in our AC A-level league match at Basingstoke last Wednesday (31st August), Anthony’s game against Roger Barnacle went on until a hour after sunset. This is Anthony about to rush his partner ball towards the peg and peg out for a 26-21 win.

I played a vital roll in this game by walking up and down in front of the motion sensor of the club’s security light, the only source of illumination that was of any use. (Yes, that picture was taken with the light on!)

And the carrots? Not the pointy parts of a hoop, but Anthony had clearly been eating his carrots that day in order to see anything at all in the darkness.

Over the weekend of 27&28 August, eight players met to do battle in the Blewbury Super-B AC Advanced tournament. For the avoidance of confusion, I will note that the “super-B” refers to the range of handicaps that are allowed when entering the tournament (-1 to 6) and not that it is played to super-advanced rules. More than one person has been caught out by this!

The lawns were in excellent condition on the Saturday morning and all the players commented on this, mostly along the lines of “wow, they are green”. The weather was nice and sunny, if a little humid and everyone appreciated the gazebo and the umbrella.

The tournament was organised as a six-round, all-nearly-plays-all arrangement. There is not quite enough time for everyone to play each other. After the first day’s play, David Marsh was in a strong position, being the only player to have won all three of their games, including a triple peel in the first game, but there were three players chasing him on two wins each.

On the second day, there was an extra challenge due to court 2 drying out just south of hoop 1, making hoop approaches rather tricky. I was longing from some tips from Eve Murihead when I failed (again!) to get into a hoop running position for hoop 1.

Once the dust had settled, Beatrice McGlen emerged victorious. Both she and David Marsh had won five games each, but Beatrice beat David in their game.

We had two excellent lunches provided by Susan Tilbrook (on Saturday) and David Long (on Sunday).

As the players were departing, there was much talk of “see you again next year”. This is clearly a “must-do” event on the croquet calendar.

On Saturday, given that I was not on the cruise that I had planned to be on due to a bout of COVID (now fully recovered, I hasten to add), I decided to go along to watch the Blewbury AC advanced weekend tournament for entertainment and education, and I got both. It was very enjoyable watching top class players go round the lawn smoothly, putting their balls exactly where they intend to. Except that sometimes they don’t. There was the occasional poorly approached hoop, making it impossible to run the hoop, leaving me thinking “I do that!” Then the education part kicks in, seeing how the player deals with the adversity. Mostly though the level of play was very high with seven triple peels (TP) completed on Saturday plus one triple peel on opponent (TPO).

I found it very useful chatting with the players over lunch to find out how they handle particular situations. The answer is often simple; the trick is to know what that simple thing is!

Just before I left, there was an unconventional opening to a game. The first player played a supershot opening (the ball is played to south west of the peg). That is not so unusual amongst top level players. The second player shot gently at the first ball (mustn’t go through to B-baulk) and missed. The first player shot at the two balls and missed. The second player shot at the three balls (hard this time) and also missed. This left the first player with their two balls in the middle of the lawn along with one of their opponents balls. I have every confidence that they went round to 4-back and made a tidy leave from that position.

On 8 & 9 June, eight players contested the Blewbury midweek AC advanced tournament. This prestigious event attracted players from as far afield as Nottingham, Cheltenham and Hurlingham.

The weather over the two days was rather mixed, with waterproofs coming out at times to ward off the rain and to keep out the wind, while at other times, sun screen was liberally applied.

The play was of a high standard with triple peels being attempted from the off. Nevertheless, I think all of the players blobbed the occasional hoop, so it is worth remembering that next time it happens to you.

The games were all played in a friendly spirit and everyone enjoyed the two days’ play. Those players who had not been to Blewbury before were very impressed with the high quality of the lawns; the rest knew that already.

Deirdre provided a delicious healthy lunch on both days, which was enjoyed by everyone who partook of the feast.

After, the first day’s play, there were three players well placed to win the tournament, with Mark Ormerod, David Marsh and Clive Goode each having won all three of their games. Once the dust settled, David Marsh emerged victorious with six out of six wins. Congratulations to David, who said that he was off to find something to pour into the engraved drinks glass that he had just won.

In late September, 24 croquet players, including myself and Steve Fisher, gathered to do battle at the annual Greek Open Croquet Tournament, which is held at Gouvia Marina in sunny Corfu. The players had a wide range of abilities, with handicaps ranging from -1 to 18.

The tournament starts with two days of AC doubles to pick the finalists for that event. This event generated a great talking point, which is described at the end of this new item.

On the following day there was a trip along the coast on a boat to the village of Kassiopi, with most participants enjoying swimming in the sea after lunch. This is always a popular day out for relaxing from the croquet.

Then the main event, the AC handicap singles, started in earnest. Those who lost in the first round go into a ‘repechage event’, where the eventual winner gets a place in one of the semi-final games. Once you are knocked out, there is a 14-point consolation event where you can play as much or as little as you wish. I started the singles well with two wins, but I made the strategic error of losing (-1, on time, on the golden hoop) in the quarter final, which was too early to claim much of a success in the singles, and too late to make much of an impact on the 14-point event. Fortunately, Richard Peperell had organised a level play advanced, one-day mini-tournament on what was notionally our day off. I entered that and I won it with 3 out of 3 wins. Very satisfying!

Interspersed with the AC singles was a day of GC where visitors played with local club members and WAGs/HABs. This is a fun day and is a good opportunity to encourage people to play who have not done so previously.

The last day was finals day where the AC singles and AC doubles events were decided. Both games were well fought and watched by plenty of spectators, most of whom seemed to think that they knew better than the players on the lawns. In the singles, Charles Ostler (2.5) from Pinchbeck beat Ros Pimlott (14) from Bowden, and in the doubles, Gordon Mills (6) and Ken Knock (18) from Pinchbeck, beat the reigning champions Peter Wilson (3) from Fylde and Rich Quilter (9) from Corfu.

There was a very interesting start to one of the early games of AC doubles. The first player shot to the east boundary, as is common. The second player shot at that ball (a less common tactic), missed, and when the ball was placed on the yard line, it was touching the first ball. The third player now had a ‘juicy double’ to shoot at, missed, and again the ball had to be placed touching one of the other two balls. I am sure you can guess what happened next. Yes, the fourth player shot at the ‘super-sized triple’, missed, so again the ball had to be place on the outside of the balls already there. We had a four ball cannon! If this happened to you, would you know how to (a) play your shot legally and (b) play your shot optimally? (All the balls are for hoop 1.) The picture shows Richard Peperell (red) and Andrew Dutton (yellow) discussing what to do next.

Peter Allan

Picture courtesy of Karen Quilter