It was very gratifying that so many of the matches went to 5 games. The highlights of the tournament definitely came from Glen's games. I thought I'd handicapped him out of the running, but he kept coming back from from the dead. Neil played out of his socks to beat Glen in the finals, and it has to be said that Glen didn't play his best in that match - I think he'd just run out of lives!
The best match had to be Glen v Tom Robinson. Not many people saw this unfortunately, but the score sheet gives some clues about what happened. The handicapping gave Glen a -17 start against Tom's +11 (i.e. Glen needed 32 points to Tom's 4). In the first couple of games, Glen couldn't make any impression as far as scoring was concerned (15/7 and 15/2), but Tom must have been tiring.
In the third game, Tom had a great start and got up to 13/-13. This left Glen in the position of needing 28 points to Tom's 2. Glen turned on the concentration and won that one 15/14. At this stage, normal mortals would have decided that having rescued one game from the grave, honour had been done and a 3-1 loss with those odds would have been a creditable result. Obviously Glen wasn't thinking like that because in the next game, even though Tom got off to an even better start (14/-11) leaving him with one point (I'm sure he would have been happy with an 'off the wood' fluke) to Glen's 26, Glen won it 17/14!!!
In the last game, Tom was obviously tired, but even so, Glen nearly blew it. Glen got up to 14/12 and it was all in the bag, but then Tom won the next TWO points to get to 14 all. Glen called 'Set 3' and allowed Tom one more point before winning it 17/15.
What a match. It's a great shame that only the marker (Steve Dyke) witnessed it.