Bath’s Short Croquet Team Top the League

Our short croquet team met Camerton & Peasedown again, this time at home, on Sunday 24th July, and secured their 5th win of the season!

The lawns were playing much more slowly than they have of late, thanks to the heavy rain 48 hours before, and some definite greening-up as a consequence, but the teams were prepared for this and enjoyed quite a number of pegged-out wins in the early part of the day. It was only when the skies cleared in the afternoon that conditions became much faster and more challenging in the hot sun, but Bath proved they were well up to the task.

Neil Pinker’s handicap has fallen steadily over the course of the season and is now down to SC 3.5, but he still dominated in all four of his games, pegging out in three of them. Sue Duncan (SC 9) had a shaky start but picked herself up and won the next three games in fine style, two of them against Camerton’s strongest players. Martin Alabaster (SC 4) started very impressively with two quick pegged-out wins, but couldn’t maintain this momentum in the afternoon, while Tony Jackson (SC 6) set his early jitters aside and also won twice, overhauling his opponent of the final game and finishing with a magnificent Golden Hoop win.

The final score was 11:5 to Bath, putting us very firmly at the top of the League table for the South East area with five wins out of six. The semi-finals are due to be played in early September, and the SWF finals are scheduled for Sunday 25th September at Budleigh, where we very much hope to be defending the trophy we won last year.