DEBBIE LINES IS SUPER‐ADVANCED CHAMPION OF ENGLAND
THE ROEHAMPTON GOLD CUP
By Joel Taylor
Players arrived at Roehampton for its annual Gold Cup advanced weekend to find the heavy overnight rain had created lakes where there were once croquet courts. Eventually the rain stopped, but just as it looked as if they might start drying out the heavens opened again and the flooding became worse than before. Frustrated by the lack of croquet, some of the players re6red to the main clubhouse and invented an icosahedral dice‐based croquet board game. With rain s6ll falling, lunch was taken and hopes began to fade of any play on Saturday; one player even chose to go home. However, as forecast, the rain abated shortly a&er lunch, and a combina6on of sandy soil and a lot of hard work by players with the rollers and the Bowdry (other brands of water soakeruppers are available) the courts became playable by 3.30pm. The photos show court 2 at 11am and 3pm.
placed players, which le& no doubt that she was a thoroughly deserved winner. In joint second place were Ian Lines and Teddy Wilmot‐Sitwell. Teddy con6nues to improve rapidly – he defeated David Maugham with a 35m hit‐in and fearless finish a&er being TPO'd, and he rounded off the tournament with his third career TP. David Maugham won the peeling prize with a QP in his first game and three triples (which turned out to be unnecessary for the prize). The most‐games prize went to Robert Wilkinson, whose efficient play allowed him to complete six games in the rain‐ shortened weekend – one more than anyone else. Five previous winners of the event contested the weekend, the most noteworthy of which was Dennis Bulloch from New Zealand, who last won the Gold Cup in 1975 (50 years ago!). This was the first 6me he had seen his name on the trophy, and he was bemused to find it spelled incorrectly. Overall, in the manager's opinion, the choice of super‐advanced achieved its aim of increasing interac6vity in games, and gave players a slightly different challenge from the usual advanced
This year's edi6on of the Gold Cup (so named because of the colour of the trophy) was played as a super‐advanced flexible Swiss. Super‐advanced was chosen because despite the Quadway hoops and Fletcher balls the lawn condi6ons at Roehampton are typically very easy, and games have a tendency to be one‐sided shoo6ng contests. As the only super‐advanced tournament in the country this year, the event thus became the de facto super‐advanced na6onal championship. A&er a shortened first day four players were undefeated overnight, and many more had only one loss. Either through good luck or good judgement of the manager a clear winner emerged by the end of Sunday, and Debbie Lines, with four wins out of four, was crowned the Gold Cup winner and super‐advanced champion of England for 2025. Three of Debbie's four wins were against the second, third and fourth
weekend. Thank you to all the players for their good humour and forbearance during the six‐hour rain delay.
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