Clive Goode Won the Tompkinson Shield

[<<] [>>] by Andrew Gregory at Edgbaston Croquet Club
3rd September (AC)

As many other clubs, Edgbaston's lawns had suffered in the drought, and conditions were tricky.

I'm sure top players would have coped, but they are not allowed in this SuperB event.

Only 7 out of 30 games saw the winner score 26 points.

After two rounds, the undefeated players were the Nottingham trio of Clive Goode, Dave Gunn and Beatrice McGlen.

In round 3, Beatrice beat Dave.

In round 4, Clive beat Beatrice.

In round 5 the game between Clive and Dave went to the golden hoop.

A win for Dave would have seen the three Nottingham players tied; no prizes for guessing what tiebreak the Mangler was intending.

This did not happen: Clive ran 4-back to secure his second Tompkinson Shield.

Enough about croquet, I like the pretty patterns numbers make.

After every round the pattern of scores was symmetric. (With 12 players this is only inevitable for the first two rounds.)

After 4 rounds we had 1 player on 4 wins, 3 on 3, 4 on 2, 3 on 1 and 1 on 0.

One of the 3s had played the 4 and the other 2 3s, so 2 of the 2s had to float up.

The inverse situation applied to the bottom 4, so 2 of the 2s floated down.

This meant that for the final round no pairing featured two players on the same score.

Despite this, the pattern after the last round maintained symmetry.

Winner: Clive Goode 5/5

Runner-up: Beatrice McGlen 4/5