Oldies can still beat the young uns

Was quite pleased with myself on Friday when I managed to win the York league pre season TT tournament. Its a individual handicap competition where you play in qualifying groups with the event accumalating in a finals night on Friday.

Got through my qualifying event on tuesday with no problem and turned up on the friday unsure who I'd be facing in the finals. Wasn't particurlary what I was hoping for as the other 3 finalists were a player out of the bottom division and two of the areas best up and coming juniors. As a decent top division player I knew I'd be giving big starts especially against the player from the bottom league and juniors that are improving are hard to handicap.

Matches in this event are up to 42 however division one players are given negative handicaps so you have to play up to a higher score, I was off minus 14 so my games would be played upto 56 (a long way).

Anyway first up I had the stronger of the two juniors and he was handicapped at "+14" which meant I had to beat him 56-27 or better for a win. Well the commitee had got it right I cant argue because the score was 56-28, take my -14 off add his +14 and we actually drew 42-42 for half a point each.

My 2nd match was off the bootom division player and he was off a massive "+35" handicap, hell he only needed 8 points to beat me. I knew I was obviously a much better player and would win the long rallies but couldn't afford any mistakes so just concentrated on returning everything, luckily he was unable to hit winning shots which helped my tactics. I got a great start not dropping a point in the first half changing ends 28-0 up eventually going on to win 56-3 (42-38 after handiaps).

So my final group match was against the No2 junior player, he had a handicap of "+20" so I needed a 56-21 win, managed to do the job 56-16 to take the honours 42-36. So two wins and a draw and I was thinking I'd won as none of the others could atch it but apparenty the top two play off a final. The player coming 2nd was the top junior who I had drawn with earlier.

But you can't have a draw in the final so before we started we tossed for a extra half point, I lost the toss which meant if I won 56-28 this time he would take the title, I needed to keep him to 27 or under.

To be honest it turned out easier than expected, I was playing well by this time and cruised to a 56-17 victory to give me the title 42-31. Its the third time I've won this event but the last time was 15 years ago. I'm pleased because I'm only the 2nd player ever to win on 3 seperate occasions and the last one was backs in the 1930's (no I wasn't playing then lol).