2018 AC World – Day 5 Report
The knockout started with 10 matches at Kelburn and six at Wellington. Regrettably, only three of the five lawns at Kelburn had new hoop holes and this made the matches played vary considerably. On the two lawns with old hoop holes, there were several one-sided games and six triples. On the three lawns with new hoop holes, there were several close games, no triples and some long matches. It is a shame that such failures occur in World Championships.
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Playing conditions were easy with virtually no breeze. Reg Bamford beat Jonathan Powe with two triples, but only after failing hoop 1 from 1 foot straight twice. Paddy Chapman and Josh Freeth had a reasonable quality match, with Paddy coming back from game down to win with two triples. Dave Maugham hit his last lift against Jenny Clarke to win the decider +5tp. The remaining matches were low quality. It was a good day for grade-based seeders since in every match where the lower graded player had finished higher in their block, they lost.
At Wellington, the match of the day was between Felix Webby and Jose Riva. The final game ended with a pegged out ending and Felix continued his excellent shooting and hoop running to hit shot after shot. He eventually failed rover, but Jose missed a 9-yarder allowing Felix to hit again. However, this time, Felix went out on a take-off and after a subsequent missed 36 yarder, Jose once again scraped through by his fingertips.
Tomorrow's two most interesting matches should be Death v Riva and Hakes v Mulliner.