James Death won the Roehampton Gold Cup

[<<] [>>] by Joel Taylor at Roehampton
18th July (AC)

James Death won the 2026 Roehampton Gold Cup defeating a star-studded field of England and New Zealand Mac players thus becoming the super advanced national champion. Death was in superb form from the start with a triple and two sextuples from his six games played on the Saturday, but the best was yet to come. In his first game on Sunday against the overnight leader, Sam Murray, Death won the opening and in preparation for another 1b leave carelessly stuck in hoop six leaving opponent balls less than 30 cm from both of his balls, but with one pair cross-pegged and the other pair cross-wired by hoop six. As New York Yankee pitcher Lefty Gomez once said, "I'd rather be lucky than good". Death was about to show us that he is both. Murray opted to lift his peg ball and cooperatively missed the 9 m double target from B baulk. Sensing an opportunity to guarantee the peeling prize, Death started his second turn with a 7 m rush-peel of partner followed by 6 more peels. The only time the peeling turn looked in peril was after 1b when Death needed to rush-peel partner through 3b up to his 2b pioneer which was next to 4b. The rush peel took just the right amount of wire and the rest of the turn went to plan for only the second-ever ranking septuple in history (the first one was by Chris Clarke at Nottingham in 2005). Despite about 10 minutes of double-banker interference, he pegged out 50 minutes after the start of the game.

Death finished the tournament with the best record of 7 wins from 8, narrowly beating Murray who had 5 wins from 6 (only losing to Death). Seven New Zealanders travelled over for the tournament, mostly for practice for the Mac, which started the following weekend at the same venue. The standard of play was very high overall --- 23 of the 49 games played involved peeling turns, and the many sextuple attempts kept the spectators entertained.