Phil Taylor wins Weldon Trophy at East Dorset

Weldon Trophy (including Phil Taylor’s reflection)

The East Dorset and Lawn tennis and croquet club holds a 4 day June tournament every year run by Andy Gregory.
The initial two days are handicap play the latter two are split into A class and B class players.
Phil Taylor (5) represented RTWCC in both the handicap and the B class.

Initially in the handicap play Phil had a marathon 5.5hour game against Margaret Page (6.5) in considerable heat. Margaret prevailed and thus set the stage for the remainder of the handicap play for Phil (who was subsequently intimidated by the minus 2.5 players).

However on the first day of the B class he came into his own and came from behind to beat David Williams (3.5) and Andy Gregory (2) but at the end of the day lost to Simon Turner (6).  This left one final game on the Sunday against Andy Meikle (4). It was a tough game with only 14 hoops made in 3 hours. However Phil made 8 of the 14 making him the winner.  This led to a tie break between Phil and either Andy Meikle or Simon Turner but as Phil had a long way to travel the tie break was done independently; a Nottingham tie break was used.  Phil was set up in corner 4 with a dolly rush to hoop 4.  The idea is to see how many hoops you can make in a two ball break. In the first attempt Phil made two hoops but didn’t get the rush to the hoop 6.  He made a valiant roll shot but the partner ball was obscuring the hoop and Phil had to settle for two hoops. In the event of a tie in the first attempt the second attempt is counted.  In the second attempt Phil only made one hoop missing the cut rush to hoop 5. With that he set off back home waiting to hear who was the opponent in the tie break and how well they had got on in the two ball break from corner 4.   At 4.00pm the call came through that Andy Meikle was in the tie break but had failed to make a single hoop.  Thus Phil had won, the possibly aptly named, “Weldon” trophy which is held for a year but gets to keep an engraved glass.