David Maugham won the Northern Championship

[<<] [>>] by Ian Lines at Bowdon
28th August (AC - Championships)

A full field of 16 gathered at Bowdon for the North of England Championship. It was one the strongest entries for many years with 15 minus players and 9 players with handicaps of -1.5 or lower.

The lawns, unusually for the Northerns, were genuinely challenging. There had been very little rain for several weeks and the grass was about 50/50 brown/green - with some of the brown patches being quite fast, and players having to judge each shot carefully based on the variable speeds. The hoops were tightly set at about 1/32" in the relatively firm dry ground, and where they were located in the brown areas the slight hills around some hoops added to the challenge.

There was only one real upset on the first day when Andrew Winn narrowly beat Mark Suter -5, 21-19, 23-22, making full use of the 4-7-9 hour time limits for the best-of-three matches. On Sunday and Monday the sun continued to shine and the lawns became even more challenging, with a number of other matches going to time. In the semi-finals, Ian Lines beat Joel Taylor +13, +7 (including a grievous by Ian from corner 3), and David Maugham used 8 hours and 59 minutes to beat Andrew Winn +8, -17, +9, which provides some indication of the conditions, and of how well Andrew played. David's semi-final against Andrew only finished at tea-time on Monday, and so the final couldn't start till 5pm, with no real prospect of finishing that day. In the first game, Ian won the opening, and hit two short lifts, but was never able to establish a break in the testing conditions, with David winning easily as the evening drew in. Fortunately, the finalists happened to both be available to resume on Tuesday morning, which they duly did after a sprinkling of overnight rain had eased the conditions a little. In game 2, David missed a few long shots and Ian won without David taking croquet. Game 3 looked to be going the same way, but Ian stuck in hoop 1 with his second ball and David finished tidily in 2 turns for a well-deserved +24, -26, +17tp win.

The Tollemache Plate was contested as an 8 player knockout on Monday by the most successful players not still in the main event (the semi-finals were still ongoing). Debbie Lines won the Plate, including good wins over Mark Suter and Dave Kibble.

The players enjoyed a tournament meal on the Sunday evening at the Griffin, and David Maugham did an excellent job buying food for all those without lunches on all 3 days. And Joel Taylor kindly provided the traditional jelly babies for the manager's desk.

Full results are on CroquetScores at The North of England Championship - Croquet Scores