Soo #02: Windy Start for USCA AC Singles

Dan Pailas in play at the National Croquet Center for the 2017 US AC Nationals
Four rounds of singles block play were scheduled for play at the USCA Association Croquet Nationals yesterday, but only three rounds were played. Despite the 3:15 time limits, many games have gone to time. Stronger wind today added to the challenge of fast lawns, solid hoops, and hoop hills. Stuart Lawrence had the day's only successful triple peel.

Every player has at least one loss. Block A has a six-way tie for first place on 2/3. Block B merely has a four-way tie for first. Net points will not be used as a tiebreaker, so there remains a strong possibility that extra tiebreak rounds will be required on Wednesday.

CroquetScores Results: USCA AC Nationals

Soo #01: 2017 AC Nationals Rolls Out

Simon Jenkins on the finishing turn during doubles quarterfinals

The 2017 National Championships of Association Croquet are underway at the National Croquet Center. The doubles quarterfinals took up all of day 1, with one match needing the full 8-hour time limit and another match coming close. (The latter match must have had a long lunch break, because they were the last to finish.)

Top seeds Danny Huneycutt and Stephen Morgan advanced with comfortable wins, Morgan tripling in game 2. Stuart Lawrence and Jeff Soo (seeded #2) also advanced in straight games, though without style points. The other matches were upsets, with the last-minute pairing of Wayne Davies and Daniel Pailas surviving 10-9 in game 3 against Chris Patmore and Jim Bast and Mike Taylor and Simon Jenkins prevailing +3 in a game three nail-biter over Brian Cumming and Ian Harshman.

2017 MacRobertson Shield Statistical Preview: Part 3

Today, we finish off the early preview of the 2017 MacRobertson Shield World Team Championship Tier 1 to be held in Rancho Mirage, California, April 18 to May 4, 2017. This simple look is centered around cumulative team stats from this team table ranked by Triples per Games Player. Chart 1 follows and is a visual on the Average Dynamic Grade per team. All stats are souced from croquetrecords.com.
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Morning Coffee: GC Worlds Take Center Stage

The three-segment 2017 edition of the WCF Golf Croquet Championships is now well under-way in Cairnlea, Melbourne, Australia with the Under-21 GC World Championship now down to eight players. Here's an update on Day 3 from the Croquet New Zealand Facebook page:
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2017 MacRobertson Shield Statistical Preview: Part 2

In anticipation of the upcoming MacRobertson Shield Tier 1 World Team Championship between Australia, England, New Zealand and the United States this coming April, this is the second of a three-part statistical look at the team line-ups. This week we'll focus on a pair of charts on Tripling Percentage by Games Played and Wins and follow with two charts based on Dynamic Grade and World Rank. As a note, this week's charts do include Chris Shilling in place of Paul Skinley for team New Zealand as that line-up switch was announced this week. All statistics are sourced from croquetrecords.com.
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2017 MacRobertson Shield Statistical Preview: Part 1

With the recent announcement of all four rosters for the 2017 MacRobertson Shield to be held in Rancho Mirage, California, in April and early May, we can now take a snapshot look at how the rosters stack up from a statistical perspective. I am going to present this in three separate postings starting with today's look at individual stats. The future postings will include a Trendline Player Rank look and a Cumulative Team Stats Analysis.

For the tables below, I'll offer some comments on items that caught my eye, but it's primarily from a statistical look as I rarely get to watch even the US players and have no in-person experience watching players from the other three teams. I would encourage anyone with more insight to fill up the comments section with feedback.
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2016 US Open: Elimination Blocks (Day 4)

PLAYER JOURNAL BY LEO NIKORA:
For the first time in its 29-year history, the United States Open did not have a single-elimination playoff. Instead, each flight of ten players was reduced to two round-robins of four players each, seeded according to the block results.  The winners will advance to the finals.  There was some trepidation in the players, but I thought it worked well.
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