Category: News

CPCC ‘A’ Team travelled to Budleigh Salterton and triumphed in the final of the South West Federation Handicap League. It wa sa resounding win in the end with the team wining 15-5.

Here’s the team photo; from L to R Jill P, Patrick, Jill S, Phil, Ann, Marion (capt.) and Simon. Charles was also part of the team this year, though not able to make the final.

Jill S – as you can see – was hardly able to contain herself.

Congratulations!

Colin and Andy represented Somerset in the National Inter-Counties Championship held at Cheltenham on 22nd and 23rd August. The top twelve counties in England competed over two days. In an all-play-all format each round consisted of a doubles game and two singles games. Here we are proudly standing behind our out Somerset flag (£8.95, eBay) at the end of the competition.

L to R; Colin, Andy, Dom Aarvold, Pamela (our dragon mascot), Neil Fillery (capt.) and Kriss Chambers.

You know how it is; you play hard … and miss! Only then do you look up and gaze fretfully at the long grass into which your ball has just disappeared. Here’s a scene from the Level Play team’s recent outing to Weston-super-Mare. The ball was eventually retrieved and CPCC went on to win the match.

Following the success of the railings at the back door of the club house, we have added another at the front. This is mainly to discourage people from stepping off the end of the veranda and doing themselves a mischief. We will now move Barbara’s lovely flower pots along a bit to stop people walking off the paving and wearing out the grass just in front of the clubhouse.

The prototype iteration of the railing was less successful!

Water has been a precious commodity this summer. Our lawns have remained relatively green and playable whilst all of us who have travelled to other clubs this year will have seen a palette of browns and some virtually impossible playing surfaces. All our ‘green’ comes at a price of course. Here’s some rare footage of a child’s hair dryer being used to clear the condensation on our water meter so we can read it.

We have finally completed phase 2 of the back door project. We had great fun putting this piece of grown-up Meccano together. Most of the horizontals are, well, horizontal, and don’t look too closely at the verticals. It was all a bit wobbly, but then when we tightened all the bolts up it became super-solid.

Phase 3 will be extending the patio slabs across towards the equipment shed – but that’s for another day … or two.

Why haven’t we done this before? The inaugural Thursday evening session was a great success. Colin and Andy arrived at 5pm, followed by nine others and play continued until 9pm. Despite the fact we stared in 30⁰C, lawns three and four were in partia-l and then full-shade and it became a very pleasant way to end the day.

On 30th June we welcomed 16 handicap 10+ players for our D-Level tournament. There was good representation from the Bath, Bradford-on-Avon and host club; others had travelled from Cornwall, Sussex, Oxfordshire and Somerset and several had lodged locally the previous night. The morning weather was absolutely perfect for being outdoors although some rain was forecast for later in the day. The group were welcomed to CPCC by the tournament manager, Nigel Wulko, and they were introduced to the day’s referees, Brain Wilson and David Richards. They started play in the usual format of four groups where All- Played All; the top two from each group going forward to play for the trophy and the bottom two going forward to play for the ’plate’. This produced a ranking for the day and therefore the distribution of those valuable points. The top eight players who went forward to the knock-out finals included CPCC’s Ray Cohen. Ray, who only started to play croquet in 2025, was playing in his first National tournament; a testament to the fact that croquet is an easy game to learn and that there are opportunities, within the game, to progress quickly to play in competitions. The event winner was Carole Gorvett from Bradford-on-Avon who very narrowly beat her Club companion, Monica Baker, by 7 hoops to 6. The ‘plate’ competition was won by our very own Angela Crofts. Just as play finished and the hoops were being lifted, the promised rain arrived. Good timing because by then the players were drinking tea and eating cake in the Club House ahead of the presentation of prizes; a great way to end an enjoyable day.

On Tuesday 9th June we hosted our annual C-Level tournament for players of handicap 7+. A field of 16 players, coming from as far away as Oxford, arrived on time, raring to get on the lawns in cold and windy weather. More than half of them had not taken part in these competitions before. Four groups of four played in the morning with the first two of each group going on to a “knockout” for a place in the National Final in September and the others doing the same for the “Plate”. The groups are selected over a range of ability using the National D Grade as the guide. Players appreciated the club’s top quality lawns and the day started well as the players “warmed” up on their dedicated lawn. Play had only just started when a fierce ice-cold shower, with a howling wind to go with it, prompted the players to rush in to put on their “wets”. However, it was the only bad weather that day and play continued at a reasonable rate. At the end of morning play, one player from each group had won 3 games, automatically taking them through to the knockout plus 4 of the runners up. As it happens, 3 of these players were CPCC members – did they have advantage knowing the lawns? After the first round they were still in the top four for the semi final so one of them had a good chance of winning the competition. The final was between 2 CPCC members, Phil Hendy and, a relatively new player, Jonathan Flatt. Phil had already beaten Jono, 7-5, in an earlier round so competition was fierce. The game started well for Phil and he was 3 up, but Jono kept his cool and pulled out some fantastic long shots to hit Phil’s balls away from scoring positions. The score reached 6 all (you need 7 to win), so the winner of the competition needed one more hoop. It was the end of the day and most of the players were watching the play. Jono won the 12th hoop so Phil had first shot up to Hoop 13, but he didn’t have a straight shot – he was impeded by a hoop. However, Jono did have an unimpeded shot and successfully sent his balls to fairly good positions to score the hoop, which he eventually did and the score was a win for Jono 7-6. CPCC took the first 3 places, 1st: Jonathan Flatt, 2nd: Phil Hendy and 3rd: Simon Munton Congratulations to all players. Jono will go on to the National Final in September.

Match report: CPCC HH team v Cardiff 5th June 2026

Five CPCC High Handicap players and referee Brian Wilson welcomed the six-strong Cardiff team to our lawns on Thursday 5th June. Despite an unpromising weather forecast, the weather was kind to us once again and we completed twenty games without interruption. After the first four rounds, the scores were level at 8-8, but we won the four remaining singles to run out winners by 12-8. Every CPCC player contributed wins to the scoresheet, with Peter Buchanan winning all 5 of his games. For Cardiff, David Palser and Peter Jones each had 3 wins.