Inter Club – Bowdon vs Roehampton – 27th April 25

Bowdon host Roehampton in the quarter final of the AC Inter-Club competition. The team is:

Roehampton’s team is: David Openshaw, Joel Taylor, Mark van Loon and Christian Carter.

We wish the team well. You can follow the scores on Croquet Scores by clicking here

John Saxby Competition: Week 4 – 24th April 2025

Sixteen members turned up this week to try and win a Mars Bar. This week’s winner was John Bagnall with a season highest score of 89. Well done John. Second and third were Garth Aspinall and Louise Cheyne with scores of 71 and 69.

Cas Sinclair moves into top spot in the table and after today’s win, John moves up 9 places into 5th place.

PositionNamePointsMovementWins
 1Cas Sinclair220+2 
 2Nigel Matthews203-1 
3=Lorna Frost193+3 
3=Mike Steer193+4 
 5John Bagnall186+91

The rest of the table is here.

John Saxby Competition: Week 3 – 17th April 2025

Sixteen members turned up on what might be the best of the weather for the next few weeks. Last years front runner, Andy Jackson came first with a score of 88. Which is the highest score of the season so far. Alan Dix and Nigel Matthews came second and third with scores of 86 and 73 respectively.

Andrew Jackson

Nigel Matthews retains first place in the overall table and the top five looks like this.

PosNameTotal ScoreMovementWins
1Nigel Matthews203= 0
2Andy Jackson166+101
3Cas Sinclair155+1 0
4Alan Dix149+12 0
5Barry McKenzie136+3 0

The overall leader board will be published after next weeks competition.

Revision Course – 26th April

Ken Cooper is running a revision course for recent joiners, or anyone with a handicap of 14 or above, on Saturday 26th April from 10am to 1pm. The course is aimed at anyone who would like to improve their skills at AC.

If you would like to attend, please register on the booking system or let me know.
Adrian Apps

WCF Under 21 GC World Championships – Jack Good

Those of you that have your 2025 Members Handbooks will have seen on the front cover Jack Good with all, well nearly all, of his trophies from last year. Jack’s now trying his best to get even more!

18th April Update.
Jack made it through to the semi final, where he played New Zealander, Levi Franks, unfortunately Jack lost 3-1 and Levi went on to play Egypt’s Fawzy Helmy in the final, whom Levi beat 3-0 to become U21 World Golf Croquet Champion. Well done Levi and commiserations to Jack on coming so close. Better luck next time.

Jack Good

Jack is currently in Sarasota, Florida competing in the GC World Championships for under 21’s

The tournament has been running for a few days now and currently Jack has so far won four of his matches in his Block (A). You can follow his progress on Croquet Scores website, click here. There are some videos on You Tube, but I’ve not found a live feed yet, I’ll keep looking. Here’s a link to one of them, click here.

Bowdon beat Pendle NWF Handicap – 13/04/25

Bowdon hosted Pendle in the NWF 26pt Handicap league. Bowdon ran out winners 5-2. Special mention for Charles and Ros; Charles won both his games and Ros won the doubles with Dave and also her singles match. A good start to the season.

Well done team

The Bowdon team was:

The Pendle team was: Paul Dowdall (7), Andrew Gould (9), Mark Kerr (12) and Libby Dixon (12)

Game scores were as follows:

BowdonPendleScore
Dave H and RosbeatPaul and Libby26-1
CharlesbeatAndrew16-14
David Blost toMark12-21
Dave Hlost to Paul5-26
David BbeatAndrew26-3
CharlesbeatMark22-18
RosbeatLibby14-11

Bowdon “Weekdayers” beat Chester – 11 April 2025

A beautiful spring day at Bowdon, saw the Bowdon “Weekdayers” (sporting a new name for this years competition), with a great start to the season by beating Chester 12 – 4 in the North West Fed Short handicap league.

Well done team.

The Team was as follows:

Alan Mayne is the teams non playing Captain.

The Chester team was; David Boyd 0, Robin Tasker 1, Nigel Worthington 3 and Ant Fletcher 10.

The individual scores were as follows, Bowdon scores are shown first and the teams winning matches are in bold.

PlayerDavidRobinNigelAnt
Nigel10-99-810-912-7
Charles8-1012-911-811-8
Ken14-410-614-114-4
Garth6-714-45-87-13

Cheshire GC Open – 5th/6th April

Last weekend saw the first of Bowdon’s 2025 tournaments, the Cheshire Open (GC) being held in surprisingly sunny conditions. Fifteen players assembled, representing 11 different clubs, with a range of handicaps from -3 to 8. Five debutants were welcomed onto the tournament scene. Two blocks of 7 & 8 were completed on the Saturday, with the top 4 qualifying from both blocks without too much trouble. However, a special mention must go to Pam Dawson, who surprised herself (and many others) by beating top seed Angharrad Walters 7-5 in her last game of the day on Saturday.  

On Sunday, the main event moved into a best of 3 knock out. Both the semi-finals went to 3 games, with Angharrad beating Giles Pepperell 3-7, 7-5, 7-4 and Ian Burridge beating Stephen Wright 7-2, 6-7, 7-2. The final was closely contested between the two Welsh Internationals and looked to be heading for a decider when Ian led 6-4 in the second. However, after Ian had missed a short but angled attempt at hoop 13, Angharrad steadied herself and ran the hoop from near the north boundary to win 7-4, 7-6.

Congratulations also Robbie Dodds, who beat Sarah Clements (7-6, 7-3) to win the Shield.

The managed opted to carry forward the relevant completed games from the Saturday into the Plate Block, leaving just the cross-block games to be played. Octogenarian Fred Owen matched fellow debutant David Beddy with four wins from four on the Sunday, but narrowly missed out in the final play-off, losing 7-5 to David.  

Full results are on https://croquetscores.com/2025/gc/cqe-cheshire-open

Thanks to all who participated, the Grounds Team (in particular John Greatbanks, Charles Harding & Brian Medley), Sheila Dix for the cakes, and Angharrad for managing.

The presentations were made by Bowdon’s new President, Lorna Frost. Angharrad announced that she had decided to name the new trophy after her mother-in-law, Dina Crowson, who had called her earlier in the week to relate a childhood memory. She had been taken from Nelson to Southport, by her father, to see the flowers on Rotten Row and came home having seen her first glimpse of croquet being played.

Presentation Photos by Carol Sinclair

Winner – Angharrad Walters
Runner-up – Ian Burridge
Plate Winner – David Beddy

John Saxby Competition: Week 2 – 10th April 2025

Twenty members turned up on a lovely sunny day to play this weeks round of the competition.

Liz Webb ran out this week’s winner with a creditable 86 points. Andy Jackson and Nigel Matthews with 78 and 73 points were second and third. Nigel moves into first position of the table.

The full table will be published after a few weeks of play. The top five after week two is as follows:

PosNameScoreMovementWins
1Nigel Matthews130+80
2Adrian Apps122+20
3Carol Steinberg114-10
4Cas Sinclair110+20
5Liz Webb108+111

Hire of Club Mallets

After a request from a member to pay £50 to hire a club mallet for the rest of the year, the committee is prepared in principle to trial this. However we need to ensure that there are sufficient suitable mallets available for all members. Therefore if any other members feel they would want to make a similar proposal, please email Brian Medley on deadlybmedley@gmail.com as soon as possible.