Scottish Croquet Association

Scottish Short Croquet Championship 2013

25 August 2013, Kinross

Roger Binks from the Meadows Croquet Club won the Scottish Short Croquet Championship, played on a warm and rather humid day with occasional sunshine at the Green Hotel in Kinross.  Last year's winner Alistair Malcolm - the sole entrant from the host club - came a close second, being equal with Roger on games won but behind on net points.

With eight players from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Kinross, the two short courts were fully occupied, and seven rounds of games were played - with a good lunch in Jock's Bar after the third round, and excellent sponge cake and Pimms provided by Alistair's wife Susan at the side of the lawn in the morning and afternoon, to keep everyone going throughout a full day's croquet.

In the early rounds the leader was Brian Clark from the Crathes Club, who won all his first four games while everyone else had at least two losses.  But the tournament took a different turn after that, as Brian lost to Roger (who had lost his first two games of the day but then started winning) and then to his fellow Crathes member Simon Robins.  So there was still all to play for in the seventh round - despite the manager's attempts to maximise the chance of having a clear winner after five or six rounds (in case the players preferred an earlier finish) by putting winners against winners in rounds two to four.  One scheduled game was not played, as Joe Lennon wanted to set off homewards and his game against Simon was not vital to the tournament, but the other three final-round games all had a bearing on the result, since each of them involved one of the three players who had won four games out of six so far: Brian playing Fergus McInnes, Alistair playing Janice Duguid, and Roger playing Hamish Duguid.

Brian looked like finishing against Fergus, with one of his clips on the peg and a break in progress with his second ball; but then, with all his six bisques gone, he had a hampered shot after hoop 5 and failed to hit the ball, letting Fergus in to go round (though only at his second attempt, with a hampered shot of his own and a chance for Brian after hoop 1) and win +3.  The game between Roger and Hamish was next to finish, with a +8 win for Roger putting him ahead on five wins from seven games.  Alistair also got his fifth win with a peg-out against Janice (+9), but as his net points score for the day was just +17 against Roger's +48 it was Roger who took home the Scottish Short Croquet shield.

There were many close games, including three that were decided by a single point.  In the first of these, in round one, Joe scored hoop 6 in extra time to beat Roger 12-11.  The second was between Hamish and Brian just after lunch; Hamish peeled his partner ball through hoop 6 leaving his own ball in the jaws, but was unlucky enough to hit the peelee in running the hoop so that he couldn't peg it out, and as Brian was on hoop 6 and the peg with two bisques left he scored the remaining points for a 14-13 win.  The third was between Fergus and Joe in round six: Joe was three points ahead after time had been called, but Fergus hit a long shot and scored four hoops in the final turn of the game to win 11-10.  At the opposite extreme was Roger's 14-0 fifth-round victory over Brian, who declined to use his bisques before it was too late!  Roger also had a +13 in his preceding game against Fergus, with a posthumous peel and peg-out using the last three of his eight bisques.

Thanks are due to the Kinross Club and the Green Hotel for hosting the event - and in particular to Alistair and Susan for setting out the courts and providing sustenance as already mentioned; also to Hamish for bringing most of the equipment from Lauriston.  Although Alistair was the only Kinross member actually playing, Brian Smith and George Kirk came along and watched for part of the day.  And Brian Clark deserves a mention for finishing all his games within the one-hour time limit, a feat that none of the rest of us achieved.

There's a photograph on the Crathes Croquet Club website, here.

Fergus McInnes

Results