It was hot. Very hot. Thankfully, the hedge on the south side of Chester’s lawns was just high enough that we could sit in the shade whilst being ‘out’. Chester made us very welcome and supplied endless drinks and biscuits.
Bowdon won the North West Federation ‘South’ AC B-level League by beating Chester 4 – 1. The morning games were halved. Charles and John scraped home in the doubles by +1 on time. Charles made most of the points while John struggled somewhat. For Chester, Robin scored most of their points with Mark focused on helping Robin. In the morning singles Brian could not overcome David who was playing much better than his handicap.
In the afternoon Charles and Brian won their games comfortably. Brian defeated Mark Lloyd, a former member at Bowdon, who was Chester’s lowest handicapper on 0.5. John was behind against David, before slowly accumulating a lead of 7 with 30 minutes remaining. Then John concentrated on limiting David’s progress, and despite David coming to within a whisker of winning on his final turn John ran out the winner +1 on time. Phew.
Bowdon only needed to win 2 games in this match to seal their top spot in the ‘South’ league, so a 4 – 1 win was very pleasing. We will now have to play a final against the winner of the ‘North’ league. That will be Crake Lakes this year, to set up a repeat of last year’s final. On that occasion Crake Lakes beat Bowdon 3 – 2, so we will look to put out our strongest team for that match.
In the B-level league, Players 1 and 2 must have a minimum handicap of zero (0) and player 3 a minimum handicap of 3. The total team handicap must have a value of at least 6. In this match Bowdon’s total team handicap was 7, whilst Chester’s was 9.
Bowdon’s heroes were:
Chester’s team was:
Mark Lloyd 0.5, Robin Tasker 4 and David Guyton 4.5
Game results were:
Charles and John beat Mark and Robin 11 – 10
Brian lost to David 13 – 21
Charles beat Robin 26 – 6
Brian beat Mark 26 – 8
John beat David 15 – 14