The Women’s Handicap Singles Champion is again Diana McGill for the second year in a row. But this year she didn’t have it all her own way and fought back from a big deficient to get the win against our up and rising star Donna Gripp. Donna had a modest 7 points head start and took full advantage of the slow starting Diana. It was looking ominous for Diana however this classy player started to find her straps and eventually won fairly comfortably, 21-14.
The Men’s Handicap is still in post section play and two intriguing match’s was played on Monday. The match between Les Judd (7 handicap) and Wayne Judd (4) was very interesting. Wayne caught Les and was playing beautiful and looked like he was cruising for victory leading 18-16. However Les picked up the jack two ends in a row when Wayne was holding good numbers and would of got his 21 points. Then on the very next end Les drew a shot right onto the jack and Wayne had three unsuccessful drives losing the match 21-18. But the most intriguing game was the match up between the high handicap player Greg Hutchings (14) and newbie Stacey Thomas (6). Most spectators expected the 8 points head start might be too much for the very talented Thomas to peg back even though he won last years Men’s Handicap Singles. However no one expected what was to come. Hutchings dominate Thomas and fly out to an impressive 18-2 lead and only now requiring 3 more shots to secure his win. We then witnessed a great come back fight and although Hutchings got to 20 first Thomas finally drew equal. In the last and final end Thomas drew two shots inside of Hutchings best bowl to win this very interesting match.
The handicap singles is a great event for developing players mental toughness and this game was a great example of this. With the help of the handicaps, it is hoped that most games will be very close which results in players needing to learn to perform under pressure at the business end of games. Thomas will now take away the knowledge that even though he had a huge deficient he can still win games when the odds are truly stacked against him. Thomas’s course for another Club Championship isn’t likely to get any easier with the possibility of facing the most experienced player in the club Neville Turnbull in his next game. Turnbull won the Kapiti Coast Centre’s Men’s Triples on the weekend with team mates Kumara Selby and Daryll Johnson. However Turnbull (5) will need to first get passed Less Judd (7) before taking on Thomas in the quarter final.
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