Lionel Tibble wins Wrest Park GC Open
[<<] [>>] by Richard Keighley
at Wrest Park
3rd June
(GC - Tournaments)
Warm sunshine greeted a full field of 16 competitors for this 2-day tournament in the National Series.
Block A featured top seed, Lionel Tibble (Northampton) who duly qualified with 5 wins but lost to Helen Reeves (Ramsgate) and Lynn Pearcy (Roehampton). He was bettered by Andy Loakes (Camerton & Peasedown) who had 6 wins. They were joined in the main knockout by Helen and Mike Bilton (Gainsborough) with 4 wins each.
Block B was won by Guy Scurfield with 6 wins, closely followed by Peter Tofield (Northampton) with 5 wins. Richard Brooks (Sussex County) duly qualified with 4 wins but the real drama was to work out who was to progress out of the 4 players with 3 wins each. Hoop count put paid to the hopes of Glynis Davies (Northampton) and David Thirtle-Watts (Hunstanton) but Kim Taylor (Enfield) had to rely on having beaten Edwin Bone (Eynsham) as both had identical net hoops.
Sunday 1st June dawned fair again and there was a little breeze which provided more comfortable playing conditions. In the Quarter-Finals, Kim made the most of his fortunate qualification by beating Andy Loakes (7-5, 7-5) and Mike pipped Guy in a deciding game (7-6, 4-7, 7-5). Meanwhile, Helen and Lionel won in two games against Peter and Richard respectively.
Helen won her Semi-Final against Kim, both games by a margin of 7-6. Her reward was to meet Lionel, who had beaten Mike in 3 games, in the Final to see if she could repeat her win of the previous day. It was not to be as Lionel recovered from being 4 hoops down in their second game to win by 7-6, 7-6 in front of an appreciative crowd of spectators.
Richard Brooks won the Shield and David Thirtle-Watts returned to Hunstanton with the Plate. Prizes were presented by the Manager and Lionel kindly thanked him for his efforts and also George Collin, the groundsman. Richard Brooks kindly acted as RoT supported by an unusual number of 6 other referees.
Finishing Order:
- Lionel Tibble 2. Helen Reeves 3. Kim Taylor 4. Mike Bilton
Using this website
