Tourney wrap-up,

The inaugural North American Open Amateur Championship was played at Sonoma Cutrer Vineyards on Oct 1- Oct 5. In keeping with the amateur theme, a maximum DGrade of 1700 was established for players. The tourney was split into two Blocks or flights. Seven players comprised Block A and 8 players comprised block B. Each block played a full round robin within their block with the top 4 finishers advancing to a best 2 of 3 semi-final and final. Highlights of the Block play are below:

Block A highlights:

A1. Steve Mossbrook's three Triple peels in a row on Friday has the croquet world buzzing and certainly sets some type of record for the lowest Dgrade player to accomplish such a feat in at least the last 30 years!! Some of the buzz from the croquet World is reproduced below:

From: Stuart Lawrence via croquet croquet@nottingham-lists.org.uk
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Croquet] New AC record: three consecutive triples by player
with DG under 1700
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

On Saturday, the USA's Steve Mossbrook completed triple peels in three
consecutive games at the North American Amateur Championship
http://www.croquetscores.com/2014/ac/north-american-amateur/block-a, a
B/C class event held at the Sonoma-Cutrer Croquet Club in California.
Having started the tournament with a DG of 1660 and ranked #401 in the
world, Steve appears to have set a new record for the lowest-graded player
to put together a string of three TPs in ranking games since 1985. A few
players have had three-game or better peeling runs while graded
in the 1800-1900 range, but I haven't found any at a grade lower than that.

Congratulations to Steve, and thanks to Statto for making it possible to
verify the record!

Stuart

The record actually occurred of Friday but didn't enter the croquet scores database until Saturday.

Steve congrats again on a special career day!!

A2. Dan Pailas and Wally Clark probably played the most closely contested battle for 5th place on Saturday night. They played a 2 of 3 game series, both games going to final turn and being decided by one hoop. Dan winning the first game and down by a hoop in the second game when on last turn he shot some 20 yards at his black ball in corner 3 and the 4b hoop got in the way which he scored to tie the game up and send it into overtime. Wally finally prevailed tying the game score. Since it was near darkness the game needed to be decided by a peg shoot from the West boundary. In rapidly decreasing light conditions, Dan finally prevailed, nailing the peg in the 4th round. Wally and Dan; Thanks for your passion and enthusiasm right to the last shot!!

A3. In the Block A ladder, Brian Wasylyk, played flawlessly to knock the number 1 seed, Mr Triple Triple Peel himself, Steve Mossbrook out of the Championship. In the other game, Jim Hanks needed three games to move on with a victory over Gary Anderson 2 games to 1. In the Championship series, neither Jim nor Brian played their best games of the week, but both games were decided on last turn with Brian leading both and Jim being able to hit in and just edge Brian for the title. Steve recovered to beat Gary for 3rd place. With his win, Jim has secured a spot in the North American Open Championship field in May 2015.

Block B highlights:

B1: Karl-Heinz Kempfer, the second seed coming in, was unbeaten throughout the tourney posting a perfect 11-0 record and winning the Block B championship. His 108 point rise in DGrade was by far the best of the tourney.

Congrats Karl-Heinz on a perfect record and your title!!

B2: Dick Titus, Bill Brown, & Larry Lennox all competing in their first "AC" tourney all achieved their first "AC" tournament wins! With the complexities of learning the "AC" game this is a significant achievement. Congrats to all on your first "AC" wins!!!

B3: Jeff Hill, who missed the semi-finals by a tie breaker, Larry, Bill and Dick entered a plate event after the main round robin and played all very close games with everyone winning. Jeff and Dick each had two wins and Jeff won the Plate on the strength of his head to head victory over Dick. Congrats to Jeff and Dick and all the plate players on your significant progress on playing and understanding and executing the "AC" game during the tourney!!

B4: In the Block B ladder, Karl-Heinz remained undefeated with 2 closely contested wins over Ian Sidey. Ian's migration from the American game he knew in Connecticut has been rapid and he competed at a high level. In the other semi Pat Dugan scratched out two 1 hoop wins over Bob Morford, games that were both very close and went back and forth on last turn. In the championship series Karl-Heinz nailed down the championship with two close wins over Pat, the last by a single hoop! Ian held on to beat Bob for 3rd place. Karl-Heinz has secured a spot in next year’s North American Amateur Block A field and the rest of the Block B players are happy!

Hospitality: Thanks Nancy Chapman for the unbelievable effort each and every day to make the event special for all of us, including spouses and guests. Simply Awesome. Mike and Helen Orgill behind the scenes as always did a super job of coordinating events with the winery, setting up and running the welcome aboard dinner at Charlie's, (The food, wine, desserts and individual croquet passion stories were truly memorable.

Toast and Tally: D'Anne Hanks and Sandy Mossbrook out did themselves with the Chicken Cordon Bleu, Salad, Rice and Appetizers and the entire party. The 18 empty bottles of wine were probably more due to the evaporation than actual drinking. (We really didn't drink that much, did we??) Friday Night was truly a beautiful evening with great food, wine, and comraderie! D'Anne and Sandy! Thanks again!!

Jim Hanks