Louise Smith won the East Dorset Womens GC

Due to the ongoing grounds work the East Dorset Womens GC Tournament was restricted to just 3 lawns and therefore 12 players.

This did not stop players from Ramsgate, Colchester, Northampton, Sidmouth, Roehampton, Compton, Winterborne Valley and 3 home players travelling into deepest Dorset on what proved to be a weekend of very competitive croquet.

With two blocks of 6 playing 19 point games on the Saturday.

Block A saw Glynis Davies (Northampton) top the group with 5 wins, although being given a scare in the first game by Liz Drury (Compton) winning 10-9.

Liz played way better than her ranking and handicap suggested throughout the weekend finishing in 3rd group position with 3 wins only missing out on 2nd place to last years winner Lynn Pearcy on 1 net hoop difference.

Marion Nagle (East Dorset) was another who belied her ranking taking the 4th group block also on 3 wins, with the scalp on Lynn with an impressive 10-7 victory.

Block B was topped by Christina Rice (Ramsgate) last years runner up with a clean sweep of 5 wins from her 5 games, closely followed by Louise Smith (Sidmouth) on 4 wins.

Sandra Allan (East Dorset) finished 3rd ahead of Kath Burt ( Winterborne Valley) who took the 4th spot ahead of her club mate Isabel van Millingen by just 1 net hoop difference.

Sunday KO pitted the unbeaten Glynis against Kath.

Glynis stormed off into a commanding 5-0 lead but Kath used all of her vast experience to gradually eat into Glynis's lead and pegged her back, with Kath eventually winning 10-7

Louise started slowly against Liz who was competing in her first serious level play tournament, with Liz taking a 2-0 lead but then Louise soon found her form and ran out a comfortable 10-2 winner, but the scoreline did not do justice to Liz who played some excellent croquet but Louise was ruthless!

Sandra Allan surprised last years winner by beating Lynn 10-8 giving the host club East Dorset a player in the semi final.

Marion Nagle again played way above expectations and took Christina to the final hoop and unfortunately peeled Christina's ball through the 19th hoop from the boundary to give Christina victory.

The semi finals were Bo3 13 point games.

Louise beat Kath 7-5 7-3. Kath's experience could not match Louise's hard hitting and Louise was now finding her hoop running form and went through to the final to meet Christina who won a very closely fought contest 4-7 7-6 7-5 against Sandra.

The final saw last years runner up Christina up against Louise.

It was a tight affair with not a lot between the players, one memorable shot by Christina saw her run hoop 9 cleanly from corner 4 but eventually Louise managed to win the first game 7-4. In the 2nd game although Christina was doing nothing wrong Louise started to find her range and with a few successful jump shots gradually got on top and won 7-3.

Congratulations to Louise Smith for winning East Dorset Womens GC 2023 and commiserations go to Christina as she has now been runner up for the last 2 years.

Ann Brooks put a forgettable day losing all 5 games on the Saturday behind her by returning on Sunday winning all of her 5 games and winning the Plate.

Good luck to Glynis & Louise who will be competing in the Womens GC World Championships in August and also Christina, & Lynn who will be trying to reach the same competition through the qualifying tournament a week earlier.