Croquet Tournament Results

SUMMARY 2021

DETAILED RESULTS 2021

AC 3 & Under Singles, 6th - 7th February 2021

The first Croquet NSW tournament for 2021 was played at the enlarged 4-court Tempe headquarters over the weekend of 6-7 February. All players were impressed with the new layout, and Rob Elliott and his team at Cooks River Croquet Club should be very satisfied with what they have achieved.

A full field of 16 took part, playing a knockout consisting of singles games in the first two rounds, and best-of-3 game matches for the last two rounds. An exhaustive set of knockouts was played, with first round losers in the "X" knockout going into the "Y" knockout, and second round losers going into the "Z" knockout. Losers in the first round of the "Y" knockout went into the "W" knockout. In addition to a final for each knockout, a play-off also took place top determine 3rd and 4th places.

The draw was arranged by p[lacing the top two seeds (Stephen Richards from Canberra and Rob Elliott from Cooks River) into positions 1 and 2 in a standard 16-person knockout. Positions 3 and 4 were then filled by random allocation between the 3rd and 4th seeds (Tim Murphy and Alan Walsh), after which positions 5 to 8 were filled, also by random allocation, between the 5th to 8th seeds, and finally the same procedure for the 9th to 16th seeds.

Only one first round game went against the seeding, with Don Wright (Cooks River) beating Mike Hughes (Cammeray) 16-15, golden point. Two other first round games were very close, with Gareth Denyer beating Kerri-Ann Organ 22-21 and Alan Honey beating John Bartrop 23-22. The first three rounds were all completed on Saturday, with no round 3 matches going beyond 2 games.

Matches on Sunday were Stephen Richards v Rob Elliott in the overall final with Alan Walsh and Rosie Landrebe in the 3rd/4th match. Stephen beat Rob 26-12, 12-26, 26-11 to take out the title. Alan beat Rosie in two games to finish third.

The "Z" final was a local Canberra battle, with Alan Honey emerging victorious over Tim Murphy 26-8, 24-26, 26-19. The 3rd/4th place match saw Don Wright beat Gareth Denyer 10-22, 15-12. 10-7.

In the "Y" knockout, Mike Hughes beat John Bartrop in two games to win the final. Meanwhile in the 3rd/4th playoff Steve Miles and Kerri-Ann Organ decided that they had had enough croquet for the weekend after Kerri-Ann won the first game 26-20 and Steve won the next game 26-3.

The "W" final saw Ted Woodley prevail over Ron Buist 14-19, 10-9, 12-9, while the battle for 3rd place went to David Stanton over Nerida Taylor 11-9, 17-8.

As can be seen from some of the low scores towards the end of Sunday, many players were feeling the effect of playing 6 or 7 games over two very hot days.

David Stanton
Tournament Manager

AC 5 & Under Mixed Doubles, 20th - 21st February 2021

This tournament was played at Tempe headquarters over the weekend of 20-21 February. A field of 4 pairs took part, playing a double round robin over the two days. The weather was fine and warm, quite muggy at times. The new lawns at Tempe were playing well, nice and fast on Saturday, a bit slower on Sunday after some overnight rain, and with just a few surprising roll-offs.

The first round robin, on Saturday, was played as Alternate Stroke Doubles, and this proved to be a great success. The pairings were all made up of one player on a negative handicap with a partner on a handicap between 4 and 8. This made for interesting games, which were also very enjoyable for all concerned.

The second round robin, on Sunday, reverted to normal doubles, putting a bit more pressure on the higher-handicap players to play well. Some responded to this pressure better than others, with Liz Montague and Peter Landrebe finishing as runners-up to Peter Montague and Rosie Landrebe by the narrowest possible margin of 1 net hoop, both teams having 4 wins from 6 games.

David Stanton
Tournament Manager

AC Eastern Seaboard Open, 16th - 21st March 2021

All planned games for the Mixed Doubles went ahead, at Warrawee and Cammeray Croquet Clubs.

For the Singles, games were played at Warrawee and Tempe on Thursday and Friday, and the weather, though wet, was not bad enough to cause any games to be abandoned. Saturday, when all games were at Tempe, was a different matter. We had torrential rain, and there were still 30 games to be played to complete the blocks. Lawn 2 was unplayable all day, while Lawn 4 was playable right up until the last game, which had to be abandoned when ut too became unplayable. Lawns 1 and 3 were playable for part of the day, in between downpours, and we were able to get all important games played in order to determine a winner and a runner-up in each block.

The only important game which had to be abandoned was between Robert Fletcher and Alan Honey, each unbeaten to this point, who were playing to determine which of them was the winner and who was runner-up in Blue block. As Robert had better net hoops, he was declared winner of the block after the game was abandoned.

The finals were played on Sunday, when the weather was once again pretty unpleasant. Alison Sharpe beat Robert Fletcher 26-9 in the first semi-final, while Callum Hyland beat Alan Honey 26TP-1 in the second. Callum took and early lead with a 26TP-11 win over Alison in the first game of the best-of-3 final. Alison came back to take the next game 26-11 and clinched the title with a 26-23 win in the third game.

Our thanks to Cammeray and Warrawee for making their lawns available for these events.

David Stanton
CNSW Tournament Committee

GC NSW Open Men's Singles Championship, 26th - 29th March 2021

GC NSW Open Women's Singles Championship, 9th - 11th April 2021

I volunteered to be Tournament Referee (TR) for this event, and then agreed to also be Tournament Manager (TM) after Peter Montague became ill and no-one else was available. This worked, because Lorraine Hatfield had lined up several referees each day, so I was able to concentrate on being TM and just relieve referees on a rotating basis (and be available for any refereeing dispute that required a TM).

Results

• Defending Champion Alison Sharpe held off Gerda Lambeck in a very close match, with Gerda winning the first game 7-3;
• Kate McLoughlin fought off a determined Pamela Barnwell for third.
• Pauline Markwell narrowly won the Y 7-6, 7-6 from Jill Sullivan.
• Sandy Tawa won the Plate w/o dropping a game.
• Full results are on Croquet Scores.

Management

Overall the event went smoothly due to good weather & cooperation from players in keeping the schedule moving. Particular matters were:

1. there was some unhappiness with the revised format after Cheryl Lloyd had to withdraw. Players liked having 8 go through to the KO, but were concerned about having to play 7 games on Day 1, and taking block results into the Finals (Liz Montague made a good argument about making block games count, but almost all the other players preferred a fresh start in Finals). In the end I offered a compromise that - if they were able to complete Round 7 on Day 1 - then there was no need to carry block games on, but - if we still had 5 games to play on Day - we would carry block games forward in order to shorten the QFs. I confirmed this with David Stanton by phone, who agreed. Round 7 was completed on Friday, albeit in increasingly dim conditions at 6pm, so block games were not carried forward;
2. we used all 4 courts at Cooks River, and having 2 single banked courts significantly sped up the schedule (we also finished late on Sat);
3. I did not start any match timed, but I kept an eye on time after warning players that we would apply 15 minutes if they hadn’t run H8 after 50 minutes. None triggered this. Several games went well past an hour, but most finished well under an hour (some much more quickly). Players were happy not to be under the clock;
4. Brenda Wild became unwell during her QF against Gerda Lambeck on Sat - tightness in her chest, pain & trouble breathing. We assisted her off court, and then I called an ambulance after 5 minutes when her distress did not abate. Brenda was admitted to hospital, and released the following day (although Tony McArthur, who went to visit her, was himself admitted on Sunday). Gerda proceeded to the SF by forfeit;
5. we did have a play-off to decide who got the last place in the KO, after Jill Sullivan & Sandy Tawa both finished on 4 wins (for a while it looked like there might be more players involved). This was played as the first 3 hoops, starting from Corner 4. Jill Sullivan made short work of this by jawsing H1 and being first to H2, so won in 2 hoops. I recommend starting from Corner 2 to H2, then H3 & H4 in future - this reduces the chances of scoring the first 2 hoops (happy to expand on this if not clear);
6. the final match in the Plate was a dead rubber, and Nerida Taylor was keen to depart, so I agreed to compromise and let them play a single 19 point game instead of bo3.

Referees

Thanks to Kaye Martin (Coogee), David Gibson (Manly), Alan Robinson (Manly), Ron Johnstone (Sutherland) and especially Derek Bull (Newcastle NP) who refereed on all three days. Referees were Supervising, and this worked well. There were no major refereeing incidents, and the minor ones provided discussion fodder for the debriefs at the end of each day. These debriefs went very well, and provided a welcome opportunity to talk about application of Rules, some theoretical possibilities, and how to operate as a referee. Topics included:

• even players at this level get out of sequence frequently, and referees need to be vigilant;
• the need to explain to players that oppo has a choice of leaving all balls where they end up, or replacing all balls, after a fault;
• the need to explain to players (even at this level) what happens in a ball swap vs replace+replay (several players got confused about which ball plays next after each of these options);
• the first case of Rule 10.5.2 that I’d seen = PAR, after Jill Sullivan & Alison Sharpe each played oppo balls in succession;
• the need for a referee to restrain themselves from going to check if a ball is off-side, until asked, since that is alerting oppo to the possibility;
• the usefulness of avoiding surprises by calling the score after each hoop, when possible even while supervising; and
• where to stand when refereeing - balancing the need to get a clear view of the shot vs minimising intrusion on the game.

Peter Freer
Tournament Manager & Tournament Referee

GC NSW Open Singles, 28th - 31st May 2021