Huntington leads way at Guildford

PHYLLIS Court was well represented at the World Team Championships (tier two) last week at Southwick near Brighton.

Chris Roberts played for Wales and Frances Colman headed the refereeing team that also included clubmates Andy Jones and Ruth Raunkiaer.

Roberts’s Wales started as joint favourites with Sweden, but they faulted at the semi-final stage with a 4-3 loss to Canada.

Roberts stayed unbeaten for four days of this six-day event that brought together the best players from croquet’s second and third tier nations, which included Hong Kong for the first time.

Wales opened with 4-2 victory against Switzerland. Norway was dispatched 5-1 next before Latvia managed to hold Wales 3-3.

Roberts’s first loss came on the morning of day five when he fell to a 7-6 reverse in his deciding game with Alexander Kirsten of Germany as Wales won the match 4-2. This left the formality of beating Hong Kong 6-0 and avoiding Sweden in the semi-finals.

In the semis, Roberts defeated Canadian Amr Hamdy 7-5, 7-4 but lost to Adam Barr 6-7, 7-5, 3-7 as Wales lost 4-3.

Roberts had two wins over Latvia’s Silvija Freimane in the third-place match to earn Wales bronze medals.

Back at Phyllis Court, improving player Carol Huntington won her second National C-Level (7+) Series tournament of the season at Guildford last week, winning two of her three morning games and was only 7-6 away from a clean sweep.

In the afternoon she sailed through the three-round knockout which also included Phyllis Court club mates Steve Morton and Ruth Raunkiaer, who had also made the mid-tournament cut.

In the first round of the knockout, Raunkiaer went out 7-2 to Dominic Webb (Guildford) and eventually finished seventh in a field of 16.

Morton beat the experienced Andrew Jackson (Guildford) 7-4 in his quarter-final before losing 7-6 to Andrew Maclay (High Wycombe) in the semis to finish fourth overall.

Huntington dispatched Ian Prince (High Wycombe) 7-2 and then got past Webb 7-6 and won the final 7-5 versus Maclay.

On the teams front, Phyllis Court A were thumped 7-1 at Poole as the East Dorset club cruised to a second successive Southern Croquet Federation (SCF) Open League title last week.

Chris Roberts saved the visitors’ blushes with 1-1 draws in both his matches against England internationals Jeff Dawson and Steve Leonard, but Ian Norris, Rick Lilley and Andy Jones all went down in straight games to opponents ranked 150 points higher.

Phyllis Court B also completed their programme of SCF 3+ League matches, with a hard-fought 5-3 home win against Eynsham.

Phyllis Court will win the league only if Blewbury lose to Eynsham, and the latter do not also beat High Wycombe by a convincing score.