Phyllis Court’s Green crowned champion of inaugural competition

PHYLLIS Court Croquet Club’s Julia Green has been conformed as the winner of the National D-Level (10+) Series with the awarding of the trophy by series director Chris Roberts this week.

In this, its inaugural year, unlike other Croquet England national competitions, the D-Level Series of 18 tournaments ran as a points race with no national final.

Green’s 30 points earned for tournaments won during the season at Phyllis Court, Ealing and Camerton (near Bath), set a tally that no other player could beat.

Phyllis Court Club mate Philip Rowley got closest, and he finished joint runner-up with his 20-points haul coming from a tournament win at Guildford and podium places at Phyllis Court and Ealing.

Green and Rowley’s double success for the Henley club in this new competition mirrors that of Dee McKibbin and Carol Huntington who scored a one-two in the national C-Level (7+) series final last month.

There was surprise news for Phyllis Court’s B team this week when they were announced as winners of the Southern Croquet Federation 3+ League, because they had completed their fixtures programme back in August.

They had needed several of their rivals’ remaining results to go their way, in which they did, to win the league title.

An unexpected late run of poor results from Blewbury and High Wycombe, left Phyllis Court B top with an unlikely tally of three wins, two draws and one defeat.

Representing the B team’s successful six-match campaign have been Mike Fensome, Raghu Iyer, Patricia Mulcahy (five games), Michael Marcel (three), and Alastair Broom, Dianne Browne and Kevin Ward (all on two games).

Internally this week at Phyllis Court, two more season-long competitions reached their finales.

Colman and Roberts retained the open doubles club championship title in a closely fought three-game final against Terje Johansen and Raghu Iyer.

Johansen and Iyer controlled the first game well and gave few opportunities away, with the former rolling back the years with a good jump score to augment solid hoop runs of both players. Colman and Roberts had to gamble aplenty to fight their way back into the game from 2-5 down to level at 5-5, and they had a chance at hoop 11, thanks to Colman’s lovely promotion of Roberts’s ball.

That gave her partner a long hoop shot to wrestle the lead for the first time, but a firm “clang” from a hoop leg not only surrendered the chance but hampered Roberts for contesting hoop 12 and the first game was lost 7-5.

Thereafter, from Roberts’s deft in-off at hoop one in game two, Johansen and Iyer never saw the lead again and increasingly accurate first ball placements from Colman and Roberts put a stranglehold on the remaining two games which they won comfortably 7-2 and 7-4 for the match and fourth senior Club title in seven final appearances.

Aly Warren and Liz Smith won the 7+ doubles season-long competition final with a 2-1 result against Gillian Symons and Hugh Crook.

The latter pair won the first game 7-4, but when Smith found her mojo in the subsequent games, that made all the difference and her side cruised to victory 7-3, 7-5.

Coincidentally Warren and Smith both retained winning records; Warren retained this 7+ doubles title, having won it last season with Michael Marcel, and for Smith this was a step-up in class after she won the 10+ doubles in 2024 with Carol Wadsworth.