For complete finish order see http://croquetnc.org/news/250/meadows-sweep-at-nc-club-teams.

The North Carolina Club Teams championship is a favorite event for many NC players. Held for many years in the mountain resort town of Linville, it’s a welcome break from the summer heat, featuring excellent courts in beautiful surroundings, great hospitality, and the fun of team competition. This was the fourteenth annual tournament, held July 23–26.

It’s also essentially a one-horse race. Since first winning the Penwell Trophy in 2003, Meadows Mallet Club has become stronger year by year. They consistently send the largest, youngest, and most talented team to the tournament. The only real questions are how early will Meadows lock up first place in the team competition, how many flights will they win, and by what margin will they outscore the rest of the field combined. In 2009, the fourteenth annual NC Club Teams, the answers were: by the end of Saturday, all of them, and 32 to 20. This was their seventh straight team title.

Handicapping has also been a factor. Many Meadows players play no sanctioned singles tournaments outside the club, and hence have no opportunity to have their handicaps lowered. The club has repeatedly requested handicap adjustments from the USCA, but these have generally been denied.

Third Flight was the smallest, with six pairs. Defending champions Brett Malloy & Jake Henderson started slowly, finishing the block 2-3 and earning fourth seed. But they advanced through the playoffs to a rematch of the 2008 Third Flight final against the grandfather and grandson team of Casper and Matthew Essick. After an attack and break by Malloy gave his side a substantial lead, Matthew Essick countered with a late-game charge, picking up a three-ball break from a very difficult position. But a failed hoop at 2-back allowed Malloy and Henderson to close out the match 17-13.

Second Flight, with eight pairs, proved highly competitive throughout. Top playoff seeding went to Tom Yates and Soup Campbell of the Meadows club with a 5-2 record, followed by local High Country Croquet Club players Bill and Judith Cooley also on 5-2. Both pairs advanced to the final, where Bill Cooley advanced his clip to the peg relatively early in the game. Deadness allowed Yates and Campbell to inch back, eventually tying the game in last turns. In second rotation of last turns, Bill Cooley had an opportunity to close out the match, but a rush out of bounds gave the Meadows players another chance. Last ball in last turns, Yates ran a long 2-back to clinch the match 15-14.

Pinehurst’s Russ Hanson and Bob Sasser were the top block performers in First Flight, losing only to Meadows’s Becky Essick and Jeff Brinkley. The two pairs met again in the final, where solid break play from Brinkley and deadness problems for Hanson and Sasser gave Meadows yet another first-place finish, 17-10.

Championship Flight was the largest group, with nine pairs. As in the other flights, six pairs would advance to the playoffs, and with a very balanced flight the competition to avoid the cellar was intense. The three top-seeded pairs each went 5-3 to qualify comfortably. The surprise performers were two pairs from Meadows, initially ranked seventh and ninth. Ricky Wilhoite and Steve Summer started 4-0, en route to a 5-3 record and fourth seed, while Ed Roberts and Jon Essick won the block 6-2. Defending champions Andy Short and Eileen Soo of Stoneridge never found form and did not qualify to the playoffs.

Both Championship semi-finals were decided by a single point, Roberts and Essick outlasting Stoneridge pair Jeff Soo and Frank Thompson 19-18, while Meadows players Danny Huneycutt and Tommy Harrington advanced to rover with both balls, before High Country players David Maloof and Bill Denton mounted a long comeback to win 23-22.

The Championship final was played before an appreciative audience of about 60 tournament and local players. Essick (blue) barely cleared the first hoop, leaving him no shot at a corner, and this proved to be the first of many critical points in the match. He played to the middle of the east boundary, allowing Maloof (red) and Denton (yellow) to join in corner one with a rush east. With black in corner four, Essick attempted to play blue into the dangerous corner three, but blue rolled out several yards south of the corner. Maloof attacked immediately, setting yellow for a three-ball break, but leaving a long double target for black. Roberts took the shot, missing to the north boundary. Denton roqueted blue, picked black off the line, and started a four-ball break, but failed #3.

With red alive only on black, Essick played blue to #2. Maloof roqueted black, rolled from #3 to two-yard position at #2, and cleared. His first two attempts to peel yellow at #3 failed, but he finally succeeded with a back-peel after 4-back. He scored penult then took deadness on black to send it near corner one, again setting a break for yellow. Roberts missed, and Denton began a three-ball break. He continued through 3-back, then missed a hampered roquet on blue.

Essick roqueted and sent yellow to black near corner three, attempting to get a rush on red, near the peg. He ended partially cross-wired and declined the shot, simply playing blue to #2, trying but failing to wire from red. Maloof, predictably, roqueted blue, then took off to yellow, sending it back to blue and wiring red from black by hiding behind 4-back. Roberts shot at blue and yellow, hitting blue but knocking it out of bounds, black remaining on court. Denton began another three-ball break, but failed an angled rover hoop with Roberts’s black ball nearby. Denton and Maloof were leading 22-2, but with five-ball deadness. Essick again played blue to #2, and Maloof played red to corner three.

Roberts dislodged yellow from rover and began a three-ball break. He had a tight forward rush after #5, but declined to go after red. Instead he attempted to run #6 with control to get the rush to red then, but barely ran the hoop and was fortunate to make the hampered roquet on blue. This left him with the unattractive choice of a long take-off to the sloping corner, or an awkward split shot to continue the three-ball break. He opted for the latter, and over-rolled his long approach to 1-back. With red and yellow five-ball dead, he could afford to simply take position at 1-back.

Denton shot yellow at blue near 2-back, missing to the south boundary. Essick adjusted blue at 2-back, and Maloof passed. Roberts, obviously of two minds about the game plan, played black to just off the west boundary level with 1-back. Denton played yellow to long position at rover, and Essick, in an increasingly incoherent strategy for blue and black, played blue to position at #2.

Maloof, knowing that time was in his favor, passed again. Roberts played black to near blue, and Denton stuffed rover. Essick scored #2, and with a rush pointed at yellow, roqueted black gently, yet not gently enough to leave it in position at 1-back: from the on-court discussion it was apparent that Roberts had forgotten about black’s deadness, and only just now remembered it. Essick removed yellow from the hoop, then played a thick take-off to #3, unaccountably pushing yellow to near #4, a position requiring angled position for blue at #3 to avoid a wiring lift. However, Essick achieved runnable position on the take-off, and attempted the hoop shot. It failed, blue bouncing out to the side, thus not giving a wiring lift, but leaving blue out of position.

State of game recap: at this point the only liveness is yellow on blue, blue on red, and black on red. Red and yellow are for rover, blue is for #3, and black is for 1-back, and there is a bit over fifteen minutes remaining on the clock.

Here Maloof and Denton made a series of seemingly minor tactical errors. With all balls out of position and partner dead, Maloof passed again, declining a free opportunity to take position at rover. Roberts took position at 1-back, and Denton played yellow to the middle of the south boundary. This allowed Essick to play blue to position at #3. Maloof stayed put in corner three (correctly this time), and Roberts adjusted at 1-back. Denton attempted the ten-yard shot at rover, shooting quite gently. Yellow glanced off the hoop and bounced right, giving Essick an easy roquet after running #3 hard. He placed yellow at 2-back, then played blue to the spot indicated by Roberts, about four feet south of 1-back.

Maloof passed again, and Roberts, rather predictably, scored 1-back but failed to get a forward rush on blue. This naturally led to a ragged start to his break, but he held it together and was finally able to retrieve red from corner three after scoring 4-back. Leaving yellow behind north of 4-back, he scored the final two hoops and made a leave for blue. It was not a good leave. He did manage to get red to #4, blue’s hoop, but he unintentionally left blue nearly wired from yellow, the only ball it was alive on, and left blue a roquet of several yards on black, going in the wrong direction to begin the break. A wiring test showed that, by a margin of about two inches, yellow was open on blue. Maloof and Denton cleared red and played yellow to corner three.

Essick roqueted black and made a good pass roll to begin his three-ball break. Time was called early in the turn, leaving Essick needing to score five hoops at the least to have any chance of winning the game. As so often happens on three-ball breaks, things got ragged around 1-back, and Essick approached the hoop from several yards to the side. His position at 1-back was quite angled, but he scored the hoop, drawing hearty applause. Despite the pressure of playing in his first (?) Championship final, and that in front of an attentive audience, he kept the break under reasonable control to finish 26-22.

Last modified on 30 July 2009