Ian Lines won the Southport Advanced Weekend by Ian Lines (19/04/10)

Ian Lines beat Keith Aiton +15, +26, -5tp, -24tp, +26 in a closely contested final to win the Jubilee Tankard at the Southport April Advanced Weekend. All the preceding rounds of the 16 player main event also went exactly according to seeding, with no great surprises. The consolation plate (a flexible Swiss) was won by James Hopgood with 5/6, only losing to Lionel Tibble who was also playing well.

The final was a fairly interactive match, with both players making uncharacteristic errors, generally caused by the slight hills around some hoops (all set at ~1/32″) leading to some difficult hoop approaches. The early season top dressing and sand was also sticking to the balls a little in the morning, which also made things slightly tricky. However, both players shot quite well throughout the match. Keith’s tps in the afternoon, when conditions got drier and easier, were very neat, but he just failed to hit a few shots in the final deciding game.

Many thanks to Southport for laying on an excellent tournament, and particularly to Terry Foster for all his work setting out the lawns, and for stepping in at the last minute to replace Lee Hartley, who was stranded abroad (is this the first time a croquet tournament has been affected by a volcanic eruption?). Congratulations also to Paul Rigge for getting his handicap down to -0.5

Dave Nick won the Southport September Advanced Weekend (6 Oct 09) by Ian Lines

Dave Nick beat Gail Curry +17, +4 to win the Southport September Advanced Weekend and get his name on the Sandiford Salver for the first time, bringing to an end the run of 5 consecutive years that Ian Lines has won the event. Ian won the consolation Swiss with 5/6 wins.

The lawns at Southport are in good condition, thanks largely to the work that has been done on them this year, and in the sunshine today they were just fast enough (around 10 seconds) to make picking up breaks and tps a little tricky, particularly due to the slight slopes on some lawns and around some hoops, which could catch out the unwary.

In addition to the glorious sunny weather, Southport provided excellent lunches and teas which all helped make for a very enjoyable weekend.