Nailsea Advanced Class Tournament

[<<] [>>] by Kathy Wallace at Nailsea
19th May (AC)

The Nailsea May Tournament effectively ran as two tournaments in one. The manager saw a strong natural break of about 100dg points so opted to split the 16 entries into 6 for the Peter Dyke Ruby Shield and 10 for the Michael Poole Cup.

The former was run as an American Block and all was well until there was a late withdrawal. A solution was found in the form of Erica Malaiperuman who, as a 1.5, was ineligible to compete. Each player had a bye but played a friendly game against Erica. The friendly games were so relaxed that one game had green paired with white for the first 20 minutes. In the "proper" matches, after 4 rounds, Klim Seabright had won three but had a bye in the final round. Neil Kingston (2.5) and Peter Rothwell (2) were both on two wins and were pitted against each other. Peter won that game so a tie-break was needed between Klim and Peter. They each started in Corner 4 and set off to play a two ball break as far as possible. Klim started off in style but left a long hoop at 6 and blobbed it. Peter played what looked like a disastrous approach at 4 but pulled off a brilliant hoop run. He also had a long hoop at 6 and failed it. Neither could face a repetition of the exercise so asked if they could share the trophy and this was agreed. As a 4.5, Klim also took the prize for the biggest upsets by beating a 2.5 and 2. Peter earned an automatic handicap reduction to 2.

The Michael Poole Cup was run as a strict Swiss using Andy Dibben's wonderful software. The early leaders were Chris Rice (5), Carl Brown (10) and Bob Whiffen (6) but the match between Bob and Carl in the final round proved to be the decider. Bob won by a golden hoop and took the trophy for the third time being the only player with 4 wins. Using quality of wins, as calculated by Timmy 2, Chris was runner-up. Mervyn Harvey (8) and Carl Brown shared 3^rd place. Carl won the prize for biggest upsets in this class, beating a 5, a 6 and a 7. The handicappers took a good look at Carl but decided to let nature take its course.

The Class tournaments at Nailsea present great opportunities for inexperienced players to test themselves against old (!) hands and to learn how to play breaks that are so accurate that they can run firm hoops. Overall, the lawns were playing well in spite of some imperfections due to the recent weather conditions. Extra grass cuts helped in this respect. Hospitality was excellent, as always, and the cream on one of the cakes had Baileys in it.