Timothy Luke won the Surbiton ARK

Timothy Luke won the ARK at Surbiton this year with a handicap of 4.5 and a perfect score of 5 wins out of 5 games.

The runner up was Joel Taylor (hcp -2) with 5/6; 3rd was Stephen Harbron (hcp 3).

Despite some concerns about conditions because of flooding the previous day, the ARK went ahead with the main moisture being dew. We had not been able to mow and mark new lines however. The rain held off until shortly after the close on Sunday.

The field was smaller than usual and the handicaps were in the unusually low (for any sort of handicap tournament) range from -2 to 7.

The two minus players both did triple peels, three for Joel (although one was OTP) and one for Jordan (after he got his gold award in this tournament last year – he seems to have had a remarkably good season)

Two games were pegged down overnight including one involving the eventual winner so after 4 rounds we had 2 players on 4/4, so a final in the afternoon between Timothy Luke and Stephen Harbron, eventually won by Timothy. Unusually although winning all 5 of his games he never reached the peg and had a total hoop count of 71, illustrating the attritional nature of his play.

The Andy Dibben flexible Swiss scheduling system was used with reasonable success.

We also must thank the cooks for their usual Surbiton lunches.

Martin Burger