Pendle Summer Handicap Tournament Report

[<<] [>>] by David Turner
6th September 2006 (AC - Handicap)

The annual August Bank holiday Handicap Tournament took place at Pendle and Craven in dappled sunshine beneath scattered clouds last weekend. After several weeks of good Lancashire rain the Pendle lawns were verdant and lush providing a good stage for an exciting event. There were sixteen competitors and a full range of handicaps. The manager, Peter Wilson, decided to run an Egyptian format without time limits and playing off base 4. This led to many exciting finishes without the stress of `Time's winged chariot hurrying near'! Alice Fleck accommodated to these playing arrangements most effectively, winning the prize for both the fastest game 55 minutes and the slowest game 5 hours 24 minutes! She also played a very exciting one ball finish against David Turner. After pegging him out, she missed the peg with her first ball but pegged out her striker's ball. With David on box and Rover, some long hit ins and missed hoop approaches left him reduced to hiding from Alice between rover and peg until a missed roquet gave Alice the chance to administer the coup de grace.

The standings before the start of the final afternoon's games were very close with Peter Dowdall on 73, David Gillet 69 Robin Delves 61 and Roger Schofield 55 but in the end the honours all went to Pendle and Craven CC as below:

The deep piled Pendle lawns proved too much for a John Hobbs mallet when David Turner attempted to hide 2 balls in corner 4 from hoop 2. Exerting maximum force into the roll shot his mallet shaft parted neatly just above the head, causing the roll shot to fail and leaving David Barrett with an easy hit in. To rub salt into David's wounds David Barrett promptly offered to sell him one of his own make of mallets!

At the end win, lose or mallet-less, everyone agreed that it had been a great weekend excellently managed by Peter and Liz Wilson with some wonderful catering provided by the Schofields, Halls and Whittakers.