In 2010 our teams have a little more success than in 2009, but nothing too exciting. However, some individual notable successes in 2010 are Mick Greagsby winning the Pat Apple trophy in California, Aaron Westerby captaining New Zealand at the MacRobertson Shield, Alex Jardine “victor of the seeds’ graveyard quarter” in the Southwick Salver and winning Ramsgate Advanced Weekend, Jon Diamond being second in Southwick Midsummer and winning our Open Golf Handicap Tournament. Alex Jardine and Jon Diamond represent Kent at the InterCounties.
David Evans joins as our new Lawn Manager and we’re upgrading our Club House facilities with lockers and electric hand dryers. We run the first Finals Day for some years, which is declared a success. Carolyn Gunstone and Kate Sander joined the Committee, replacing Elaine Houslop and Roger Morris.
Miriam Reader, a long standing member and sometime Committee member, dies in December and leaves us a significant bequest, part of which we spend on a dishwasher (which she used to do!).
2011 was nothing special, with our SECF teams having even less success (despite one of our away opponent’s being Ryde, Isle of Wight, and having to visit us!). The lawns are still in good condition as we acquire a replacement Groundsman, Ray Kemp, early in the year. Still, a new competition that succeeded well was an internal Golf teams event held on a Tuesday evening, won by Mick Greagsby’s team.
None of our players won any of our external tournaments, but notable was a player from Uruguay who won our Open Golf tournament, and promised to donate a cup for next year (the Montevideo Cup). John Hobbs won the Over 75 class at the National Veterans, so now holds the Pidcock mallet trophy!
Our new flag and banner got a paid outing to Hever – hopefully some new members in future (and a return visit in 2012), and we can report that two of our members, Richard Smith and Jo Wadman, got married.
2012: Mick Belcham retires as Secretary, after 10 years! Sadly, we also have to report the death of Peter Howell. He was our Chairman for 16 years and had retired to Budleigh Salterton in 2001.
Our teams have a bit more success again, with the Golf Handicap team winning more than 50%. [The Association Advanced team again failed to win a match…] However, we have a stonking result at the inaugural SECF Southern Challenge, coming 4th. Individual external success was achieved by Jon Diamond, winning our own Golf Open tournament and also the Compton Open Championship.
The weather is so awful that, despite retaining our groundsman, the lawns are not as good as we’d like and even worse – we don’t manage to get any Autumn maintenance done, so the prospects for 2013 aren’t good either. Our Winter programme prospers though, with the One Ball now a firm favourite with 16 players on one occasion.
Well, despite our fears, the lawns in 2013 were in quite good condition during the year. We’re still without a Secretary, but in this electronic age this isn’t so much of a handicap as it used to be, and Bob Bruce volunteers part-way through the year.
We didn’t enter the GC top Level Play League, as we looked like being outclassed. (We were in the Advanced League, coming bottom again.) However, our other teams did quite well – we won the GC Restricted League and also the SECF GC Team Doubles event. Our Southern Challenge team didn’t quite succeed as well as in 2012, coming 7th of 10 teams in the top division.
2014 saw some members returning after a significant time and the membership up to 55, with a succesful new Introduction to Croquet course.
We finally achieve our first win in the AC Advanced League after 4 years and actually make it 2/4! We don’t do well in the other leagues, but at least win games in each of them. Alex Jardine wins the Honeygrove Cup and Martin Lester a Handicap event at Cheltenham.
The Finals Day ran successfully again and we managed One Ball throughout the Winter.
The 2015 season started with a bang and 25 players on Opening Day. It continued well and saw a new record for membership, now up to 62 with a good number of AC beginners, thanks to a new Coaching plan and Saturday AC sessions.
Our performance in the SECF Leagues wasn’t brilliant with only our Golf Handicap team scoring more than 50%, finishing 5th out of 16, and we came 7th again in the Southern Challenge. Barney Lewis came 3rd in the Regional Final for the CA All England Handicap, narrowing missing out on getting to the National Final. Jon Diamond won our own Golf Open tournament again, with Martin Lester winning the Pegasus Plate.
The season ended with a very busy Finals Day, with only a couple of matches not played on the day and Mark Houslop being specially busy. Unfortunately the weather interfered with our Autumn Maintenance and with almost continuous rains the lawns barely re-opened. However, a Bonfire’s Night party at Kate Sanders was fantastic with lots of bangs!
2016 was another good season (our 50th as it subsequently transpires). Our efforts for National Croquet Day produced 35 visitors and even one member.
Jon Diamond won the Pegasus Plate, but didn’t perform well in the other external tournaments he entered and neither did anyone else. We probably ought to draw veil over over performance in SECF events and leagues too.
Richard Mann chickened out on Finals Day, he had some excuse about playing in the CA All England Regional Final, but the rest of the matches were almost all played in front of a decent crowd of spectators. The only one that didn’t complete was the Hunter Plate, which ran out of time as Jon Diamond was in three other finals…
2017 Membership continued to increase, up to another record at 65, but sadly we lost Hazel Moss-Davis who donated our Club House in 1995.
Media coverage was great this year, with a visit from the new KMTV station who created a short video (now on our site) and Jon Diamond being featured in Waitrose Weekend.
Martin Lester won the Pegasus Plate and Jon Diamond the Honeygrove Cup. Paul Gamba and Nigel Barton won their sections in one of the one day GC events at Southwick.
Finally, after 13 years, our website has been revamped and is now on the WordPress platform.
2018 membership was slightly down, but still over 60, and we welcomed Nigel Barton as a new Committee Member.
Our SECF League results were mostly dismal, with the exception of the A league in which we won one match, and the team events weren’t much better. Alex Jardine came second in the Sussex B-level Challenge and Jon Diamond came third in the Southport Handicap event.
Barney Lewis won our heat of the CA One Ball event, but lost in the semi-final at Surbiton. Tom Carpenter won the Montevideo Cup with a full complement of 12 players, but we didn’t have enough entrants to run the Pegasus Plate. A visitor won the Honeygrove Cup again, but Jon Diamond reduced his handicap to scratch! Well done. We also ran two one-day AC events.
Finals Day had 4 matches, with Richard Clark sadly playing his last competitive game before retirement due to ill health and again sadly lost.
Wow, 2019 gives us 22 new members – as a result of us hosting part of the Simon Carter GC World Championship or just that we ran four Introduction Courses? So, obviously we’ve got a record number of members (72).
None of our members were playing in the GCWC, but we did provide some referees (Jon Diamond and Mike Gentry) as well hosting some of the Blocks and the Plate and providing many volunteers. Of course the weather intervened with the first half-day consumed with waterlogged lawns. Nevertheless play on the other days was fine. This was also filmed by Escape to the Perfect Town as well another couple of hours to provide a nice package as part of their programme about some people trying to move to Tunbridge Wells.
Thanks to our Sponsors – AV Trinity, Thomson, Snell & Passmore and Wells Associate as well as to a grant from Royal Tunbridge Wells Together (to help with the media costs), which made this a financial success in addition to the various media items – radio, TV and press.
Again our performance in SECF events was less than sterling: 10th in the Southern Challenge, 5th in the A and U leagues, 8th in the GC Level, 9th in the Restricted and 16th in the Handicap Leagues. Barney Lewis qualifies for the CA All England Handicap Final, but doesn’t win, Jonathan Lamb wins the Montevideo Cup again and Andy Dibben retains the Honeygrove Cup. At the end of the season not only do we have 7 matches on Finals Day but we also have new GC and AC tournaments for our new members.
Finally, we should mention that we introduced another 50 French students to croquet.