Susan Fulford won the Pegasus Plate

[<<] [>>] by Jon Diamond at Tunbridge Wells CC
10 Aug 2014 (AC - Handicap)

The Pegasus Plate is the regular Royal Tunbridge Wells Association Croquet Handicap weekend tournament. This year it took place on 9th/10th August and had a full turn-out with 12 players from as far apart as Colchester and Brighton and handicaps from 1.5 to 18.

Saturday's weather was bright and mostly sunny, if a little breezy towards the end of a long day of three untimed games, with strange bisque rules (Yorkshire?). However, Sunday produced the tail-end of Hurricane Bertha. We started playing quite happily with a little drizzle, but a sudden thunderstorm and heavy gusts of rain at about 11am sent most people scurrying for the clubhouse.

After a wait of the best part of an hour the puddles were heavy on all three lawns and it was still raining. The weather forecast was for rain for the next couple of hours and it was decided to abandon play, since it would take at least an hour for the lawns to recover to a playable state if it ever stopped raining?

This left the manager, John Hobbs, with a decision as to how to award the trophy, since both Susan Fulford and Richard Lea had won all three games played and hadn't finished their fourth round game. So, on the basis of net hoops, Susan was declared the winner. Hopefully she'll bring her much stronger half next year, Robert who is an ex-World Champion, but we have our doubts!