Starting position at the beginning of the day,

Jose 4
Dave 3
Rob, Christian, James, Stephen 2
Samir 1
Gavin 0

Round 5

Jose had an easy win against Gavin who couldn't get going.

Dave had an amazing first pick up, rolling to 1 from C4 and then taking off from level with 4 to a ball in C2 to try to make 2, finished in the jaws of the hoop. He ran the hoop, hit the ball in C2 only to miss a short roquet having made 3. Samir ended up the winner hitting a last lift against 4b and peg and completing a TP.

Elsewhere Christian had a comfortable win over Stephen and James had a good TP under pressure against me after I had made a string of early errors.

Round 6

Early in this round the heavens opened and very briefly the lawns were unplayable. The rain only lasted about 15 minutes, but during and just afterwards on all the lawns there was coming up short and missing - or running back to mother.

Jose finally lost in these English conditions another good win for Christian. Samir, me and Gavin getting off the mark, were the other winners.

Round 7

The lawns were now much easier provided you remembered to hit it hard enough.

Jose survived Dave having a standard TP opportunity to get back on winning ways.

I had an epic with Christian. With my balls on 1 and 3b, Christian had 5 peels of a sextuple before missing after rover. I failed 2b on my quad. Christian then missed a 4 yard peg out and I hit a couple of 20 yard last shots to win.

Samir won again, making errors but hitting everything against Gavin and Stephen had a comfortable win over James.

Scores at the end of the first series

Jose 6
Christian, Samir, Rob 4
Dave, James, Stephen 3
Gavin 1

Round 8

Jose had a clinical win over Stephen, helped by Stephen going through 4, forgetting he had run it already.

Christian got into another game where he couldn't quite finish off on peg and peg and the opponent, this time Gavin, kept hitting last shots. Gavin got as far as 2 and 4b before eventually going out on a big square split from c2 trying to pioneer 3 going to Christian's balls near c1.

Both me and Jose with the first break are going to 3b with 2 POPs on our first break aiming to leave their h1 ball 8 yards N of C1, partner in C2 and symmetrically their h3 ball 8 yards S of c3 and finishing by hitting the 3b ball into C4. I've been using it for a few years and Jose was paying attention when we played our Opens QF in July.

I had the first break versus Samir. Samir made a leave but only left a 20 yarder which I hit with the 3b ball, but didn't make a good leave either and Samir hit his own 20 yarder. Samir popped me to 3 going to 4b, but for the leave left my hoop 3 ball only 4 yards S of c3. I rushed this down the boundary and rolled up to 3b. Samir missed from 30 yards and I had a TP.

James won to complete a miserable day for Dave and join Samir on 4/8 and stay just about in contention.

Will try to provide regular updates from now on, now we are nearer crunch time.