Philip Taylor wins Honeygrove Cup

At last another TW winner for this event, despite Phil’s relatively lowly 4.5 handicap!

Winner Phil Turner (left)

Phil had an excellent tournament, winning his first four games, despite a squeak against Andy Dibben winning by one on time. Sadly, in the final game against John Daniels he managed to break his mallet (see pic below), but recovered with a John Hobbs club one he’s used before.

He went well with this, but unfortunately as he was coming to the end of the break with his first ball, he committed a “grievous” (pegging out his own ball as well as his opponents’s), to leave a two ball ending rather than a three ball one he’d anticipated! So a potentially comfortable win was rendered difficult, since Phil’s ball was two hoops behind in a One Ball game. Despite his best efforts at roqueting from a distance he failed and lost by six hoops.

Not something wanted…

This led to a four way tie with Andy Dibben and Jonathan Smith joining John and Phil. The tie-break was difficult, but eventually led to Phil running out winner, with Andy as runner-up.

The only other notable event was Jon Diamond peeling his partner ball through hoops 4, 5, 6 and 1 back (not all in the same turn and with some half-jumps) and failing the 2 back peel just before time was called, when he needed to get his ball to peg and peg-out to draw the game.

Full results are on croquetscores, but obviously Phil had a handicap reduction…

The players were all grateful for the excellent cakes produced by Ros Marriott and Fiona Taylor.

We like home made cakes!