Golf Croquet Club Day Competition
On Friday 6th June we held our inaugural GC Level Play Day Competition. The weather was decidedly dodgy earlier in the day and we did have a few short rain delays. By the afternoon however, the rain had dried up and we ended with a warm and cloudy day.
We had 12 entries from club members of a wide range of handicaps from -2 to 12 but this range did not prevent plenty of competitive matches with a quarter of the matches being decided on the golden hoop. The competition was organised as two blocks of six players with each player playing all the others in the block as a round robin.
After this, the top two in each block played in the main knockout with the other players playing for places 5th to 12th. The two blocks panned out quite differently. The blue block had a very convincing winner in David Pratt who won all his games, and the runner up was Tim Luke who won three games along with Robert Hassell. Tim had a significantly better net hoop tally and so progressed to the knockout. The red block was very different with no one player winning all their games. This left three players with 4 wins but with only two going through to the knockout, it came down to net hoops again. Roy Parsons missed out with David Dray and Trevor Houghton-Berry progressing through to the knockout.
Both Semi-finals were keenly fought. In the first, Trevor pipped Tim on the golden hoop and David Pratt continued his 100% record with a 7 – 5 win over David Dray. This Left the final between Trevor and David Pratt. This was played as a 19-point game and David took an early three hoop lead at 5 -2. Trevor managed to close the gap with some good hoop running and this meant that the match again went to the golden hoop. David capped off his perfect day by running the golden hoop from the boundary so congratulations to him. There were many hard-fought competitive games in the playoff matches and all the players played some high quality shots and impressive hoop running during the day. The general consensus was that it was a successful day and so we hope to organise another one later in the year . The full results are available on the website croquetscores.com
The photograph shows David Pratt receiving his prize from the tournament manager, Michael Gentry.