BRITISH OPEN

January 7/8 2023

The Short Mat Players Tour (SMPT) returned to the York & District IBC for the 3rd time to stage this years British Open competition. As usual, the contest took place on 32 mats with all 192 entrants randomly drawn into 32 groups of 6 for the round robin stage. The field was then divided into 3 for the knockout stages with the top 2 in each group playing for the CUP, the next 2 for the PLATE and the bottom 2 for the SHIELD. This format gave everyone a guaranteed 6 matches over the weekend. All games were over 12 ends. There were 15 North Yorkshire players in the field.

Our CUP qualifiers were Pete Sayer, Peter Arthur and Lawrence Moffat who were all undefeated whilst Bronagh Toleman went through after winning 4 out of 5. Pete, Peter and Bronagh lost their first match and Lawrence went out in the last 32. (In a dramatic final end to Bronagh’s match, there was only a single wood left on the mat and it needed an umpire to adjudicate that this was in fact in play and thus her opponent (Nick Evans) went through by 11-10.)

In the PLATE, Roger Green, Lawrence Ireland, Rodney Knight and Peter Jensen all went out after their first game whilst Jonathan Dawson made the last 32. Rod Dawson and Lee Toleman kept going with Rod reaching the Quarter Finals and Lee going all the way and winning his Final.

Our other 4 players, Robert Mumford, Dave Hunton, Jean Bridges and Callum Malone all competed in the SHIELD knockout  but only Callum reached the last 32.

This was another excellently organized weekend played in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere with many of the games top short mat players taking part. The Cup winner was Gary McNabb (Ireland) taking his second successive title.