Debbie Lines is Super-Advanced champion of England

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Roehampton at 11 & 3

Players arrived at Roehampton for its annual gold cup advanced weekend to find the heavy overnight rain had created lakes where there were once croquet courts. Eventually the rain stopped and just as it looked as if they might start drying out, the heavens opened again and the flooding became worse than before. Frustrated by the lack of croquet, some of the players retired to the main clubhouse and invented an icosohedral dice-based croquet board game. With rain still falling, lunch was taken and hopes began to fade of any play on Saturday; one player even chose to go home. However, as forecast, the rain abated shortly after lunch, and a combination of sandy soil and a lot of hard work by players with the rollers and the bowdry (other brands of water soakeruperers are available) the courts became playable by 3.30 pm. The photos show court 2 at 11 am and 3 pm.

This year's edition of the gold cup (so named because of the colour of the trophy) was played as a super advanced flexible swiss. Super advanced was chosen because despite the quadway hoops and Fletcher balls, the lawn conditions at Roehampton are typically very easy and games have a tendancy to be one-sided shooting contests. As the only super advanced tournament in the country this year, the event thus became the de facto super advanced national championship.

After a shortened first day, four players were undefeated overnight and many more had only one loss. Either through good luck or good judgement of the manager, a clear winner emerged by the end of Sunday and Debbie Lines, with four wins out of four, was crowned the gold cup winner and super advanced champion of England for 2025. Three of Debbie's four wins were against the second, third and fourth placed players, which left no doubt that she was a thoroughly deserved winner. Joint second place were Ian Lines and Teddy Wilmot-Sitwell. Teddy continues to improve rapidly --- he defeated David Maugham with a 35 m hit in and fearless finish after being TPO'd, and he rounded off the tournament with his third career TP.

David Maugham won the peeling prize with a QP in his first game and three triples (which turned out to be unnecessary for the prize). The most-games prize went to Robert Wilkinson, whose efficient play allowed him to complete six games in the rain-shortened weekend --- one more than anyone else. Five previous winners of the event contested the weekend, the most noteworthy of which was Dennis Bulloch from New Zealand, who last won the gold cup in 1975 (50 years ago!). This was the first time he had seen his name on the trophy and he was bemused to find it spelled incorrectly.

Overall, in the manager's opinion, the choice of super advanced achieved its aim of increasing interactivity in games and gave players a slightly different challenge from the usual advanced weekend. Thank you to all the players for their good humour and forbearance during the 6-hour rain delay.