The 2009 Singles Championship started off promisingly but halfway through the first game the heavy rain arrived. Thankfully it only lasted a short time and by the end of the first game the rain had gone. The weather for the rest of the day remained mainly sunny with a little bit of cloud.
There were 23 people participating in the Singles Championship and the top 16 qualified to participate in the afternoon session which consisted of four games in the Swiss system.
In a repeat of one of last years semi-finals Robbie Stronach took revenge over Ed Strachan to qualify for the final. In the other semi, Lynn Jenkins triumphed over Brian Ward. In an all Fochabers final, Lynn moved up a gear and raced in to a commanding lead. Robbie rallied to pull back some points but Lynn finished him off to win the 2009 Singles Championship.
In the plate, the winners of two leagues fought it out to claim this trophy. In his first season of Petanque and his first SPA competition, Henry Hutcheson from the Perth Club, qualified to take on Colin Montgomery in the Plate final. The wily old Monty triumphed to win the plate, with threats of not coaching any more Perth players. In a generous gesture Monty presented Henry with a bottle for his achievements in his first event as it was also noted that Henry qualified for the knockout phase of the shooting event.
Qualification for the shooting competition took part in the morning and the top 8 players went through to a straight knockout phase. There was a playoff for the eighth position as Finlay Ross and Ed Strachan had the same score. Ed managed to just pip Finlay in the playoff to complete the top eight. The knockout took place over the afternoon and was fitted in, in between the Singles matches. Fresh from her Singles win Lynn Jenkins strolled into the shooting final where she came up against the in-form Howard Tipton. Howard raced into a commanding lead from which Lynn was unable to recover. Howard was crowned the 2009 Shooting Champion.
Our thanks go to Derek Adam for organising the singles and shooting events and also thanks to Mags Montgomery and the catering staff for organising the lunch time food and all the other things that made this event a success. Our thanks also go to the team who setup the shooting apparatus. Finally thanks to the Inverleith club for hosting this event which was run very smoothly and was thoroughly enjoyed.
Ed Strachan