Lunchtime here.

So far conditions are failing average for the U.K. Lawns around 10.5 seconds. Trickiest thing is the balls are relatively new so milling creating some randomness to both rushes and croquet strokes. Quite a few errors so far but expect this will go down once the hoops loosen up and we get more used to the balls.

Round 1 saw Christian 26TP and Jose 23QP winning comfortably to get their first wins in the Pres against Gavin and Stephen respectively.

Dave was also a 26 TP winner against James including one of the best C4 for 2 cannons I've ever seen. (I usually don't attempt to play a cannon and just play a little croquet stroke getting a rush.) Dave played an open cannon rushing to 2 perfectly, while developing the other ball 5 yards along the S boundary.

In my game I broke down on a quad giving Samir all the balls for a standard TP, but he failed 1 and finished.

Round 2

I beat Gavin 24QP after an error strewn opening.

Jose and James had an opening where no one took croquet on turns 3-7 and then Jose hit a 33 yarder from C3 to C4 turn 8. Jose went to 4b. James got a break but too late to attempt POPs and went to 1b. Jose hit and finished 20TP.

Christian was on a 3 ball break to win with a TPO against Samir, but contrived to have no 2b pioneer and failed it to give Samir a winning break for 7OTP.

Stephen had the first break against Dave which he took to 3b. Dave peeled Stephen to 3 going to 4b and reaped the benefit on the POPs when Stephen failed 2b on a delayed quad. Dave won 10TP.

So far

Dave, Jose, Rob 2
Christian, Samir 1
Stephen, Gavin, James 0