Roberts and von Schmieder win titles

PHYLLIS Court Croquet Club’s singles championship finals were contested and eventually shared in the past two weeks by old rivals Chris Roberts and Charlie von Schmieder.

Roberts won the golf croquet (GC) final 2-0 avenging his earlier 2-1 defeat at the hands of von Schmieder in the association croquet (AC) competition.

In the GC, Roberts pounced on an uncharacteristic miss by von Schmieder at hoop one and, with a good hoop run at hoop three to down in front of hoop four, he established a two-hoop lead.

Von Schmieder did well to level the scores at hoop eight, but a solid ninth-hoop score and then a fine clearance to a wired position behind hoop 10 gave Roberts game point, which he scored calmly to win 7-4 when von Schmieder missed his clearance at hoop 11. Von Schmieder bounced back well in game two and won the first two hoops, only for Roberts to level after some good tactical exchanges at hoop four.

Roberts missed his only clearance of the match and failed to capitalise on a chance at hoop five, but he more than made up for that when his centre ball strike from 18 yards to save, and eventually win, hoop six gave in all the momentum. Von Schmieder missed scoring a routine hoop at seven, allowing Roberts to take the game two lead for the first time, and he then tightened his grip on the contest with a repeat of the clearance to a wired position trick from game one. With a 5-3 lead, Roberts’s confidence was high when he took on and scored hoop nine from the boundary and, following a couple of clearances later, he wrapped up the game 7-3 and the GC championship.

Von Schmieder leads Roberts 14-12 in GC final appearances and 9-5 in annual championships.

Earlier, von Schmieder had won the Phyllis Court AC open singles championship title with a 2-1 win against Roberts.

This competition was played as a three-player block, so there was no final as such, but having already beaten Richard Peperell 2-0, von Schmieder’s win over Roberts gave him the club’s AC title.

Roberts won a fairly quick first game in routine fashion and the speed of that was fortunate because the second game was a marathon that von Schmieder won by a smaller margin.

As the light began to fade, the pair pressed on with the deciding game, and von Schmieder soon took control of the court and froze Roberts out well.

Von Schmieder managed to peg out well after dusk and, with probably less than 10 minutes remaining before it really would have been too dark, he won the AC championship.

As the Boucher Trophy returns to its regular home on the family von Schmieder mantelpiece, Roberts will play Peperell for the runner-up Bucknall Tankard, in what will be Peperell’s final competition game at Phyllis Court before his move to Sussex.

Von Schmieder’s latest victory stretched his lead over Roberts in AC Championships, and he now leads that rivalry 12-2.