Cornwall Croquet Club
Match Report
Sun 21 Jul 2013 - SWF Federation League (Played at Taunton Deane CC)
Taunton Deane v Cornwall
Cornwall Croquet Club was represented by three players when they visited Taunton for the third of their Federation league fixtures of the season. Taunton's lawns had suffered from the spell of very hot dry weather, which continued on the day of the match. Many areas were brown, and as a result, the lawns were generally, but somewhat unpredictably, fast. The conditions also meant that balls often turned quite sharply off track, making what looked like being promising shots into fairly useless ones. In addition, to deal with earlier saturation of the lawns a gridwork of deep drainage slits had had to be made, which in the dry conditions had tended to open.
Cornwall's players struggled largely unsuccessfully to deal with the conditions, while the home side coped rather better. Not surprisingly, scores tended to be fairly low, only one match finishing within the time limit. The morning doubles saw Cornwall's Tony Backhouse (handicap 7) and Des Honey (11) go down 8-15 to Margaret Huckett (11) and David Grose (11), while David Edwards (9) lost 16-20 to Stephen Constance-Baker.
Cornwall did little better in the afternoon session, Backhouse losing to Constance-Baker 10-26, Edwards going down to Huckett 9-19. However, Honey rallied in the last quarter hour or so of his game against Grose to win 13-12, so avoiding a whitewash.
Final Score: Taunton Deane 4 Cornwall 1