September 12–15, Pinehurst, NC

Jeff Soo, Sterling Breed, and Sandra Lucas-Hyde were flight winners at the fifteenth annual North Carolina State Championship. Twenty-six players participated in three flights of American-rules singles. The unexpectedly low entry was partly a result of the late venue change, and also the nearness of the popular Pinehurst Invitational, to take place the following week. Notably absent from the Championship Flight were 2001 state and national champion Paul Scott, and seven-time state champion Bill Berne.

Conditions were wonderfully fast, the lawns having been speeded up by the use of a growth inhibitor for a lawn bowls tournament the prior week. The remnants of a tropical storm brought much-needed rain on the weekend, and fortunately this caused only one slight delay on Saturday.

Second Flight, with only four players, played a round robin of best-of-three matches. Top seeds Val Minick and Sandra Lucas-Hyde both won their first two matches in straight games, so their match on Saturday would determine the winner. Minick won the first game 10-8, Lucas-Hyde won the second 17-13, and Lucas-Hyde won the match and the first-place trophy by winning the third game 15-14.

The seven players in First Flight played a complete block, the top four advancing to a single-elimination playoff. The block was tightly contested, each player winning between two and four games. The playoff was even closer, each of the games decided by a single point. Top block finishers Conrad Haas and Sterling Breed met in the final, where Breed won 16-15.

The format in Championship Flight was Draw and Process, supplemented by a plate competition in the flexible Swiss format. Ed Roberts went the longest without losing a game, finally losing his first game to Mack Penwell in the third round of the Process. Danny Huneycutt, still in only his first year of tournament play, advanced to the Draw final with impressive wins over past state champions Penwell and Andy Short. Jeff Soo joined Roberts, Penwell and Huneycutt in the final four, each of whom had beaten one and lost to one of the other three.

Roberts beat Huneycutt 21-18, and Soo beat Penwell 26-13, ensuring that there would be a new state champion for the first time since 1998. In the final, Soo held yellow in close position at #1, then missed an attempted roquet with red. Roberts set blue a rush to #2 and played black to #3, but Soo entered with yellow and rush-scattered black and yellow off the court. Roberts scored #2 and rushed to attack, but missed the boundary roquet on yellow. Blue and black were both dead on red, so Soo played red to #2 to give yellow a break. Roberts attempted to roquet with black, but knocked yellow out of bounds, and Soo ran his two breaks to win 26-3.

Short won the plate trophy by winning three straight games.

Jeff Soo was the Tournament Director.

Championship Flight

First Flight

Second Flight

Last modified on 12 December 2004