Glasgow
Eleven players were entered for this handicap tournament, but only eight were present at the start. Jola Jurasinska and Jamieson Walker had arranged to arrive about 11.30am (following Jola's early-morning return from a trip to London to see some of the Wimbledon tennis championship), and by way of compensation had played a game earlier in the week, which Jola had won. Alan Wilson was the other late arrival, having been allocated a bye in the first round. So four games began at 9.30 or so, all on the upper (and more level) two lawns at Alexandra Park, and they pitted the West of Scotland residents against the others: Robert Lay (handicap 11) against Esther Jones (8), Tony Whateley (6) against Fergus McInnes (4), Joe Lennon (10) against Hamish Duguid (14), and Malcolm O'Connell (3.5) against Janice Duguid (11). The lower right lawn was brought into use for a game between Alan (3) and Jamieson (8) once they had arrived, and all three lawns were then occupied for most of the day.
An innovation this year was the use of time limits, set at three hours plus three minutes
per bisque, following a suggestion from Jamieson. All four first-round games took
the full time allotted to them, but Malcolm did peg out after time had been called to keep
the "T" out of his score. There were more games with peg-outs later, but
they remained in the minority, and the day produced a remarkable crop of five games (out
of 13) with a score of +1 on time. Play finished on Saturday with one game pegged
down (Joe v Tony) and the last of the others reaching their time limits about 7.45pm.
Fergus was in the lead, with three wins; Jamieson and Esther were the nearest contenders,
each on two wins and one loss.
The weather forecast for the weekend had not been encouraging - light showers on Saturday,
and heavy rain and a strong westerly wind on Sunday. Saturday was better than
predicted, with only a few spots of rain and a good deal of sunshine. But on Sunday
morning the players gathered to find standing water on all the lawns. The puddles
on the top right lawn were relatively small and shallow, and with the rain easing off
Tony and Joe resumed their game there rather than on its original court to the left where
the flooding was more extensive. After some delay and discussion, Fergus and Alan
came to double-bank with them; and when Tony and Joe had finished a game began between
Jola (whose handicap, omitted above, was 14) and Malcolm. The other two original
lawns remained too puddly to be used, but someone spotted that the bottom left one - left
out of the original setting because of its noticeable dip near the middle - was
in better condition, and once hoops had been installed there two more games were able
to begin. The rain came and went throughout the day, with a welcome period of
sunshine in the early afternoon; puddles did appear again after the heaviest of the
rain, but were smaller and of shorter duration than those seen in the morning.
Around 3pm all the courts were empty, with three games recently finished, and the manager
consulted the players on whether to start more games. Another squally shower coming in
from the west helped to settle the consensus in favour of an early close of play.
Most people had had four games by this time, and Fergus was well out in front, having won
all his four. He therefore received the quaich, with its inscribed black plastic
base, and with it the problem (unsolved by Robert in the past two years) of finding someone
with the right equipment to add the names of the winners from 2006 onwards.
Fergus McInnes
Photographs
Results
("Egyptian" system)
1. Fergus McInnes 119 points, 4/4: beat TW +4T (22-18), HD +9, RL +6, AW +7.
2=. Jamieson Walker 105 points, 2/3: beat AW +6, HD +1T (23-22).
2=. Janice Duguid 105 points, 2/3: beat JL +1T (17-16), EJ +8T (21-13).
4. Malcolm O'Connell 104 points, 2/3: beat JD +10, JJ +4T (24-20).
5. Hamish Duguid 101 points, 2/4: beat JL +2T (17-15), RL +7T (20-13).
6=. Esther Jones 100 points, 2/4: beat TW +1T (17-16), JJ +7T (20-13).
6=. Tony Whateley 100 points, 2/4: beat JL +3T (23-20), AW +15.
8. Robert Lay 99 points, 2/4: beat EJ +1T (18-17), JJ +5T (20-15).
9. Alan Wilson 92 points, 1/4: beat MOC +1T (19-18).
10. Jola Jurasinska 90 points, 1/4: beat JW +12.
11. Joe Lennon 85 points, 0/3.
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