SCA - Summer Weekend 2009

Summer Weekend 2009

4-5 July 2009, Glasgow

This was the second tournament played at the Glasgow Club's new home in Alexandra Park, but the first SCA tournament there and the first to make any use of the lower bowling greens: the Glasgow Open, with eight players, had been accommodated on the two upper ones. For a while it looked as if all four would be needed this time, but withdrawals left the number of players at 13 and the number of courts required at three.

Seven of the 13 were travelling from Edinburgh, but only two of these - Hamish and Janice Duguid - were present at the start time of 9.30am on Saturday. Brian Cosford had been granted a late start, and the manager, Fergus McInnes, was still in transit, along with Jamieson Walker, Jola Jurasinska and Robert Inder, but had phoned to say that those present and ready to play could pair off at random and get started. The delayed carload arrived to find four games in progress: Robert Lay (handicap 14) against Janice Duguid (18), John Surgenor (1.5) against Joe Lennon (10), Alan Wilson (3.5) against Alasdair Adam (14), and Malcolm O'Connell (4) against Hamish Duguid (16). All these were on the upper courts, and so it was on the considerably rougher and less level court 3 that the latecomers began their games at about 9.45: Fergus (3.5) against Jola (20), and Jamieson (7) against Robert Inder (11).

The difficulties of court 3 probably favoured the lower-handicapped players, and after two games on it Fergus had wins over Jola and Joe, though both by fairly narrow margins, and Jamieson had a win over Robert Inder and a narrow loss to Robert Lay. The other courts, rather slow but otherwise easy, gave more advantage to the receivers of bisques, and here Hamish and Janice each had two wins on the first day - Hamish losing only to Brian (handicap 20), and Janice to Robert Lay, who was the only player without a loss. Play ended for the day at 6.45pm, and with five games in train at that time there was a good deal of measuring of positions and recording of results on improvised pegging-down sheets. Robert Lay was the overnight leader, with two wins in his two completed games (and a strong lead against Robert Inder in the third) - followed by Janice, Malcolm, Hamish and Fergus on 2/3.

Robert Inder had to withdraw on Sunday because of an urgent computer problem in his business, and so the Robert v Robert game was annulled. Robert Lay played Fergus instead, and showed his usual mixture of excellent break play and occasional aberrations, taking his first ball to rover with all his 10.5 bisques standing but then using 5.5 to score hoop 1 with the second ball, after which he finished at a cost of 2 more. He went on to win by wide margins against Malcolm and Joe, reaching a rating of 122 points in the "Egyptian" scoring system.

Janice also had a good Sunday, with scores of +26 against Malcolm and Jamieson. So did Jola, who achieved a narrow win against Brian Cosford (13-12 after three hours, on court 3: the players had prevailed on the manager to make an exception to the usual no-time-limits rule as the game threatened to last all day) and a +17 against Hamish, making up for her two losses on Saturday. Everyone else had at least one loss. So Janice took second place, with a rating of 115, well ahead of the field but still some way behind the leader. Both Janice and Robert began further games, which could have put Janice ahead if she had won and Robert had lost, but both were unfinished at the 5.30pm cut-off and therefore did not count towards the final scores.

Perhaps the most exciting ending on Sunday was in the game between Alan and Fergus, where Alan pegged out one of Fergus's balls and one of his own, leaving his own remaining clip on rover and Fergus's on 4-back. Fergus hit in but failed 4-back; Alan stuck in rover, and Fergus took position at 4-back; Alan ran rover and went a little to the east of it; Fergus scored 4-back and took position at penult; Alan went for the peg gently and finished a few feet from it; Fergus ran penult, didn't get a good rush to rover, approached to long angled position with a half-roll, and after some thought went to a wired position near the peg; Alan missed the peg into the jaws of penult; Fergus took position at rover; Alan missed the peg gently; Fergus ran rover but was wired from Alan's ball and the peg and failed in an implausible attempt to jump over rover; and so it was +1 to Alan. Other incidents worthy of mention occurred in two of John Surgenor's games. Playing Malcolm on Saturday, John was left cross-wired at hoop 1, and played a successful jump shot over the hoop to land on his partner ball (though he later broke down and Malcolm won +12). Then on Sunday Fergus had used his two bisques and taken one ball to the peg but twice failed to get going with the other ball and eventually let John in by bouncing off hoop 2, and John went round and pegged him out; John was making progress in the three-ball ending, but stuck in hoop 5 and gave Fergus a wiring lift as his ball was almost in the jaws of hoop 6; Fergus hit John's forward ball east of hoop 4, rushed the ball out of hoop 5, got severely angled position at hoop 2 but ran it with a jump shot, and finished.

Robert Lay's victory was convenient in that he had forgotten to bring the trophy, which he had won last year. He was presented with a polystyrene cup in place of it; but his handicap reduction to 12 at the end of the tournament was the real thing! Janice had one also, to 16, catching up with her husband, although he would have gone to 14 on Saturday if his third game hadn't been completed that day.

Fergus McInnes

Results

1. Robert Lay 122 points, 5/5 wins: beat JD +8, JW +4, FM +24, MOC +26, JL +22.
2. Janice Duguid 115 points, 4/5 wins: beat AW +20, FM +16, MOC +26, JW +26.
3. Hamish Duguid 102 points, 3/5 wins: beat MOC +24, AW +26, JS +19.
4. Jola Jurasinska 102 points, 2/4 wins: beat BC +1T (13-12), HD +17.
5. Alan Wilson 101 points, 3/6 wins: beat AA +12, FM +1, MOC +13.
6. Joe Lennon 100 points, 2/4 wins: beat JS +14, AA +7.
7. Robert Inder 100 points, 1/2 wins: beat JJ +7.
8. Fergus McInnes 99 points, 3/6 wins: beat JJ +7, JL +5, JS +9.
9. Malcolm O'Connell 96 points, 3/7 wins: beat BC +3, JS +12, JW +14.
10. Brian Cosford 95 points, 2/5 wins: beat HD +25, JW +26.
11. John Surgenor 91 points, 2/6 wins: beat AA +14, BC +2.
12. Jamieson Walker 90 points, 2/6 wins: beat RI +9, AW +3.
13. Alasdair Adam 86 points, 0/3 wins.

Photographs
(by Fergus McInnes and Jola Jurasinska)

The first result of the tournament: Hamish Duguid (right) pegs out against Malcolm O'Connell, with Alan Wilson looking on.

Robert Lay about to play an ambitious rover peel attempt on the way to his win against Fergus McInnes.
(He appeared disappointed when the ball stopped short of the hoop!)