Sat 8th July Manager and reporter: Arthur Rowe
Six players contested the Shakespeare Cup internal AC tournament on Saturday 8th July. The weather was warm with only a light wind. The ground was rock hard after a week of warm dry weather, and the lawns were very fast making playing conditions difficult. This was the first time the competition had been played since 2014, and it was good to see the new players Heather and Adam competing in their first level play competition. The hoops were set at 2.5mm but were very unforgiving of loose shots: as a result everyone had plenty of opportunity to make progress and both players had many turns in all the games.
We played 4 of the possible 5 rounds, with the round featuring the top 3 players vs the bottom 3 being omitted. The rounds were timed to finish 2 hours after the previous round, essentially fixing the finish time. After 3 rounds Mick was undefeated, and was the only player to have completed a game inside the time limit – he had in fact completed 2. He was well ahead in the last round against Arthur until the last 30 minutes when Arthur made an all-round break with black and finished two turns later, with Mick on penult and peg. Derek had the chance of changing the final reckoning but lost his last game to Adam who did well to emerge with two wins in 3rd place and only a few points short of a handicap reduction. Arthur was the winner having beaten Mick in the last round, with both players having 3 wins.
Thanks a lot to everyone who played for making it such a good day. The ranking of 3,4,5 is unresolved by who-beat-whom, so I have based these results on hoop difference – which puts Adam 3rd.