2023 Open Midweek AC Advanced Tournament

Click on images to enlarge

As a consequence of a late cancellation there was an odd number of players, so it was decided to split the entry into two blocks, with a lower handicap group of 9 playing in the 'A' block in a Flexible Swiss format and a higher handicap group of 6 playing 5 rounds in a standard all-play-all 'B' block.

In the 'A' block Sam Murray and Nigel Polhill - both previous winners of this tournament, and both playing off a -1½ handicap - each won their first game quite quickly, and then faced each other in the second round, with Nigel emerging the winner. Meanwhile the other -1½ handicapper in the tournament, David Marsh, faced Mike Hedge. Mike turned out to be on top form, beating first David followed by Bryan Harral and then Sam Murray to end the first day's play undefeated and a net gain of 49 handicap index points. The only other undefeated player was Nigel, so next day Mike and Nigel met in the first game of the day in what was effectively the deciding match, which Nigel managed to win fairly comfortably. Meanwhile Sam Murray was busy adding to his tally of triple peels, completing one on the first day and then a tpo followed by a tp on the second day to finish the competition with three of them.

In the 'B' block, which was played with 3-hour time-limits per game, Gary Bennett used his many years of experience to stem the tide of a recent rather poor run of results, and ended the first day as the only player with 3/3. Of the others, only the defending 'B' block champion Alan Clark had scored 2/3 with the other four players all on 1/3. On the second day Geoff Johnson emerged as the player on form, scoring convincing +22 wins against both Gary and then John Noble; but Gary managed to win his last game on time against Richard Peperell to retain his overall lead with a final 4/5. Geoff finished second on 3/5, and the other four all on 2/5. Perhaps the most notable event was at the end of the very last game to finish, when in his final turn after the time-limit had been called, Arthur Reed tried to finish by pegging both his balls out with a cut rush from about 8 yards, and succeeded in rushing his partner into the peg for a 'grievous' and thus ended up a point short, winning on time instead!