Trio from Phyllis Court fail to reverse county fortunes

Phyllis Court Croquet Club trio, Chris Roberts, Roger Goldring and Andy Jones, could not rescue the Oxfordshire County team in Division Two of the Inter-Counties Championship at Southwick last weekend.

Former Women's World Champion Jenny Clarke (New Zealand) was playing with an injury and Raouf Allim (High Wycombe) had a recurrence of his ‘yips’ problem and both played under par by their own standards.

Clarke recovered her form on Sunday but over the weekend, Oxfordshire only managed two match wins from five and so missed out on a hoped-for promotion back to Division One.

Clarke was complimentary about the play of Phyllis Court’s Goldring and Jones, whom she partnered in doubles games on Saturday and Sunday respectively.

And one deft ball placement by county debutant Jones to within inches of hoop 12 from ‘miles away’ drew particular praise from Clarke.

Phyllis Court’s Roberts won five of his seven singles games over the weekend but overall, the Oxfordshire team underperformed and were left ruing three close match losses and what might have been.

Oxfordshire opened well with a 5-2 defeat of the joint Derbyshire/Lincolnshire/Warwickshire team, and ended with a good 4-3 victory over Bucks, but in between there was little joy in three 3-4 defeats to a CA Select team, Gloucestershire and Berkshire.

Back in Henley, Rick Lilley and Roger Goldring won the Phyllis Court Open Doubles tournament for the second year in a row last week. They qualified in second place in their block behind Helena Fensome and Andy Jones who were undefeated in the morning, as were Robin Coates and Dianne Browne in the other block.

Joining them in qualification was the partnership of Chris Roberts and Frances Colman.

In the afternoon Trophy Block it was the two morning runners-up who emerged into a de facto final game that went on to 6.45pm, and thanks to some super and consistent clearing, Goldring and Lilley defeated Roberts and Colman 7-2 to retain the Iain Lindsay Cups.

There were good performances by the higher handicapped players in this tournament, most notably John and Sue Rumford who were fearless when taking on (and scoring) long range hoops.

They took top seeds Roberts and Colman to 6-7 and beat Terje Johansen and Raghu Iyer in morning block games, however, the latter pair recovered from three morning losses to win the Plate event in the afternoon.