Wycombe win close Mary Rose quarter-final

Wycombe continued its bid for a fourth consecutive Mary Rose final with a close-fought 3-2 win over Woking in the quarter-final on 29th August.
 
On paper, Woking’s team with handicaps of 0.5, 0.5 and 2 were the slight favourites over Wycombe’s team of 0, 2 and 4.5, but the home team got off to the best possible start, with Ed Olhausen, playing his first Mary Rose match, completing a rapid victory over Ian Anderson. Meanwhile, Keith Pound and Mike Porter were involved in a tight doubles game against Andrew Dutton and Nick Harvey. Keith and Mike definitely had the better of the luck and prevailed with a +3 victory on time to make it 2-0 to Wycombe.
 
In the afternoon, Ian beat Keith to bring the score to 2-1, but Mike completed a triple peel against Andrew (again with a certain amount of good fortune) to secure Wycombe’s victory. To finish the day, Ed and Nick fought out a titanic battle – Ed had all of the early play and sped out to a 22-0 lead, but Nick battled back to cut Ed’s lead to 23-22.  At this point, Ed hit a 15 yard roquet and had a chance to finish, but could only peg out one of his balls: 25-22. Nick joined up, and Ed missed his 6-yard shot at the peg.  As time was called, Nick ran his final two hoops but he too could only peg out one ball: 25-25. Ed had one final chance to hit  from the East boundary, but missed and Nick was able to complete victory by the narrowest possible margin of 26-25. 
 
Wycombe now progress to a semi-final match at Surbiton.

​Mike Porter