AC Worlds Playoff Round 1 Offers Plenty of Entertainment
The 2023 WCF Association Croquet World Championship moved into elimination play today with 32 players battling in the first round of the knockout. The event is being held at several clubs near London with Hurlingham as the primary venue. The event runs July 15-23 and continues tomorrow with the quarterfinals.
The draw was fascinating for a number of reasons, but most notably the U.S. was able to advance eight players into the main event. This meant U.S. fans got to experience what other Big 4 fans have endured many times — a quad with three players. That resulted in Ben Rothman with a world ranking of #21 battling #36 Stephen Morgan in round one, with Morgan advancing in three games 26tp-9, 0-26tp, 26tp-0. In the lower matchup, Blake Fields his #83 ranking up against #3 Robert Fulford and took game one with a triple but Fulford recovered in games two and three for a 0-26tp, 26stp-0, 26tp-21 win, to eliminate a sweet sixteen U.S. battle
In other U.S. news, #31 Tom Balding had one of the top upsets of the day as he took out former world champion Stephen Mulliner (#19) in a highly inter-active match that had a final score of 7-26tp, 26otp-23, 26tpo-21 in favor of Balding.
GC World Champion Matthew Essick (#7) took on England’s Robert Wilkinson (#145) and won in two games, while #17 Zack Watson had to come back from a 1-0 deficit to get past Women’s World Champion Debbie Lines (#43) to win in three games.
Kyle Maloof (#55) and Stuart Lawrence (#56) also were in the same quad and could have met in round 2, but both fell in two games. Lawrence went up against #9 James Death (ENG) and Maloof fell to New Zealand’s Logan McCorkindale (#14).
ROUND 2
The Sweet 16 promises to be an interesting day and looking through the matchups, I think the most intriguing is the #17 Zack Watson / #12 Jose Riva (ESP) matchup. The winner of that one will go up against the winner of Robert Fletcher and Gavin Carter (ENG). Riva knocked off Ed Duckworth (ENG) in round 1 in two games and went 7-2 in Block H and now sports a 9-2 overall record with two quintuples and three triples. Watson went 8-1 in Block D and is now 10-2 overall in the event with five triples.