Stephen Mulliner won the GC English National Singles Championship

[<<] [>>] by Stephen Mulliner at Ryde
23rd September 2014 (CqE Official News)

Sixteen players gathered at Ryde LT&CC to compete for the Ascot Cup. Ryde's lawns were in excellent condition despite a torrential downpour on the previous Thursday and the club members spared no effort to make the 14 visitors from "the Big Island" feel welcome. The championship dinner in the clubhouse on Saturday evening was a most convivial affair and the catering team deserved the warmest of thanks for the quality of the catering.

Play began with two blocks of eight playing single 19 point games with the top two to proceed to a best-of-three 13 point knock-out. In Block A, there was an early surprise when Helena Fensome (the UK's resident Finnish croquet player and penguin enthusiast) turned over former holder Stephen Mulliner by 10-8. Helena played very steadily and produced two excellent long hoops at just the right times (from her perspective!). 18 year old Harry Dodge looked to be in excellent form and ended Saturday unbeaten at 6/6 with only one tight game. Stephen survived his own tight game against David Bell despite David producing a superb crunch hoop-shot at hoop 14 in extra turn 8 after time had been called - by running it from the north boundary! However, Stephen took good position at 15 and David could not repeat his heroics with the clearance. By the end of the day, Stephen was 5/6 and could not be caught for second place because he had beaten his nearest rival, Andrew Cowing,

Block B offered a much more interesting range of Sunday options. Lionel Tibble, fresh from his London Masters triumph, looked in superb form and rattled off five wins by 10-4 or 10-5 to be the clear favourite. However, he was pegged back 10-9 by Nick Cheyne who, after losing 10-9 to Tom Weston in round 1, proceeded to play with increasing confidence and was also on 5/6. Pierre Beaudry, another ante-post favourite, had dropped games to Nick and to Chris Sheen but was still in contention with 4/6. Jason Carley, a relative newcomer from East Anglia, was also in the mix with 4/6. In the final round, Pierre had to play Lionel and Jason had to play Nick. As it turned out, Pierre and Jason won and thereby created a 4-way tie on 5/7. Under the tie-breaking regulation, Nick (with 2/3 against Pierre, Lionel and Jason) and Pierre (also with 2/3 against the mini-group) went through and Lionel and Jason with 1/3 were relegated to the Plate.

The Plate was run as a three-round Swiss with single game 13 pt semi-final and final. Lionel gained some consolation by winning it, beating local player Roy Tillcock in the final. While this was going on, the main event semis produced a fairly rapid win for Stephen against Pierre by 7-3, 7-6. Pierre led 5-3 in game 2 but suffered the frustration of rush-peeling his opponent at 10 to leave Stephen at 5-5 with advantage at 11. Although the game went to 13, Stephen's R moved from just missing the hoop to glueing itself to just running the hoop backwards and, to add to Pierre's woes, Y was close enough to K to administer a paralysing stymie.

The other semi was a great spectacle. Harry took the first 7-4 but Nick hit back promptly by 7-3. Harry took a 6-4 lead at in game 3 but, after several rotations, was confronted by Nick's Y in the jaws of 11. He declined a difficult jump with K in favour of taking position just north-east of the peg but Nick successfully rushed R with Y to 4 yards NNE 12. Harry's B was on the West PP and was well short of the blocking point and Nick seized his chance to run 12 with R. There was now an extended battle at 13 with some excellent clearing, including one remarkable chip of K out of the jaws of 13 by R from the N boundary. The match was decided by Nick missing an 8 yarder with Y at B and Harry making no mistake from 3 yards.

Game 1 of the final was closer than the score of 7-3 to Stephen suggests. Harry's single ball clearing was extremely consistent but his hooping let him down on three occasions when he would normally expect to score the point. He produced an excellent reply from a congested position above 7 after Stephen had run it with Y by a few inches, using B to rush K to 2 yards N of 8 and block R at the same time. In general Stephen could not quite match him at clearing but made almost no mistakes with his 3+ yard hoops.

Game 2 was even closer with some lengthy battles at 5, 7 and 9. Hoops shots were taken from at least 5 yards and Stephen had to run 7 from the boundary and 9 from 5 yards angled to take a 5-4 lead and get position at 10. This proved decisive and Stephen took the Ascot Cup for the second time having won it in 2012.

Richard Hoskyns presented the trophy on behalf of the CA and expressed its thanks to Ryde for hosting the event with such enthusiasm and hospitality.