NATIONAL CROQUET

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33753, 28 January 1975, Page 26

NATIONAL CROQUET

(N.Z. Press Association) WANGANUI. A sixteen-year-old Dannevirke player, Paul Skinley, caused a major surprise when he beat the three-times open winner, John Prince (Hastings) in a semi-final of the open championship at the national croquet championships in Wanganui yesterday. Skinlev looked to be heading for a heavy defeat when Prince executed a triple peel and easily won the first game, 26-0. But Skinley fought back well to take the second game 26-19, and then the third 26-7. There are now only four players left in the open championship, with Skinley win-

ning through to the final. Monty Porter (Christchurch) and Mrs J. N. Ward (Hamilton) meet this morning to find out who meets Miss Raewyn Elliott (Manukau) in the other semi-final. The South Island doubles champions, Roger Murfitt (Christchurch) and Denis Bulloch (Dunedin) won the second life of the championship doubles when they accounted for the champions last year, CliS Anderson (Gis- ! borne) and Alan Anderson (Palmerston North), 26-6. The first-life final will be , fought out between Prince and Clarke and the Christchurch pair of Jack McNab and Monty Porter today. Porter and McNab yesterday eli- , minated New Zealand repre- • sentatives Gordon Rowling (Motueka) and Bob Jackson, 22-16. Rowling, the defending men’s champion, also lost to McNab in the men’s championship first life, 22-26. A. D. M. Ross (Parnell) caused a major upset when he defeated the defending open champion, Murfitt, 26-21 in the second life of the men’s championship. The defending women’s champion, Mrs Hazel Woollett (Ohakune), bowed out in both lives of the women’s championship. In the first life she lost to Miss Susan Grigg (Christchurch), 6-26, and narrowly lost to Mrs H. Dempsey (Waimate), 25-26, in the second life.