Sidmouth Herald published 1 August 2013
Graced with glorious weather, Sidmouth Croquet Club held its annual One Ball tournament over two days last week, writes Colin Walls.
This is a variation of Association Croquet where each opponent uses only one ball.
It is mainly a fun tournament, but it gives excellent hoop approach practice.
The objective is to get your ball through all the hoops in turn and hit the peg - before your opponent does. Often it can be quite a battle!
On Friday, eight low handicap players battled it out. They all played against each other, playing seven games in all.
The result was a resounding win for Margaret Piper who won six out of her seven games.
Two players, David Temple and Colin Walls managed to win four games each, and they were declared joint runners-up.
On Saturday it was the turn of the higher handicap player and nine players took part, a potentially awkward number for a competition.
They were divided into three blocks of three with everyone in a block playing each other. A second set of thee blocks was then played, resulting in all playing four games. The four players winning the most games then played semi-finals. These were Richard Thurlow, Ann Ractliffe, Derek Powell and Anne Reece.
Thurlow and Reece won through to the final, which was eventually won by the former at 13 hoops to nine.
Having won all his game so the day Richard Thurlow was indeed a worthy.