Dave Maugham won the Ranelagh Gold Cup

[<<] [>>] by Kevin Carter at Roehampton
30-31 Jul 2005 (AC)

There was a "better class of player" in this year's event, largely owing to its being deliberately scheduled the weekend before the World Championships, with the expectation it would be used as a warm-up. However, perhaps disappointingly only one overseas player, Mike Jenner, entered.

The presence of John Gibbons, Ed Duckworth, David Openshaw, Stephen Mulliner and others did not prevent Dave Maugham for winning the trophy again, though the Roehampton Club did not follow the time-honoured tradition of allowing a three-time winner to keep the trophy....

The all-Bowdon final with Ian Lines was entertaining, with much subtle play. In fact, for most of the match Dave was in catch-up mode, after losing the first owing to being hampered after the rover peel of a TPO and losing the opening of the second. Ian had also played well to get to the final, dispatching John Gibbons and Stephen Mulliner on the way.

Unseeded Chris Farthing played out of his skin, beating Jeff Dawson and David Openshaw before a drubbing by Dave in the SF and narrowly losing to Stephen in the third place play-off.

The big guns did not use the easy conditions to exercise their sextuples, though there were 20 TPs of one flavour or another during the two days. However, in the consolation swiss Ed Duckworth and Chris Patmore tried an SXP at every opportunity. Chris Patmore completed all six peels of one before trickling onto partner ball after an angled Irish peel at rover. In another, later, he left himself a straight quad and got into all sorts of trouble, eventually trying the penult peel from the north baulk behind four-back (it didn't go through). Ed obviously knew when to give up on a forlorn SXP, since he won the swiss.

Results:
Final: David Maugham bt Ian Lines -14, +14TP, +17TP
3rd place play-off: Stephen Mulliner bt Chris Farthing +5STP, +2
Swiss consolation: Ed Duckworth (5/7)