News

The Sussex open championships were held this weekend. We had an entry of 22 which was an awkward number to deal with But the weather was fine and there close fought matches in all of the blocks.

On the Saturday the tournament was divided into four blocks two having 6 players and two having 5 players. The format allowed the top four in each block to progress to the first round of the knockout on Saturday afternoon which was a single 19 point game.

The local interest saw Liz Farrow, Richard Brooks, Ben Harwood, Jonathan Isaacs and Robin Wootton progress into the last 16.

On the Sunday the quarter final - again a 19 point match - saw Richard Brooks and Ben Harwood progress to the last 8. Richard played an old club member Neil Humphreys and won,  putting him into the Semi Final.

Ben had a very close match with the eventual winner of the tournament Miraslav Havlik, Miraslav winning through by 10 hoops to 8.

The semi final saw Richard against Andrew Hobbs and losing a best of three match 5-7 7-3-6-7.

The final, another close match, saw Miraslav beat Andrew Hobbs 7-6 7-6. The playoff for 3rd and forth places Alex Wood beat Richard Brooks 7-6.

Elsewhere, the Shield for positions 9- 16 was won by Richard Gardiner who beat Stephen Custance-Baker 7-3, 7-5 The play off for the Shield was won by Liz Farrow who beat Gerald O Brien 10-8.

The Plate which was for players who did not qualify for the Championship Knockout was won by Paul Green who won all 4 of his block matches.

All scores and positions are on CroquetScores.

Sussex Champion Miroslav Havlik

Andrew Hobbs, runner-up

Colin Britt, Bowl winner

Richard Gardiner, Shield winner

Paul Green, Plate winner

Thanks to Roger Sutton for managing the competition and to Andrew Fall for photos