The leading contenders in the Budleigh ladies’ internal competitions are now becoming clearer as the group stages draw to a close, writes David Roberts.

In the ladies four-wood singles championship, Ann Vincent heads up Group One with maximum points having impressively won all her matches to date.

With two players qualifying for the semi-finals from each of the two groups, Hilary Medley will have to sit tight and await the results of other matches as she presently holds second place in Group One having completed all her games.

In Group Two, Rosemary Carter has won all her four matches and has booked her semi-final position.

Playing two matches last week; there was 22-12 win over Diana Chance and, against an in-form Penny Weeks, she registered nine bowls over the last five ends to come through 21-12. Runner up in this group will be decided in the last match between Penny Weeks and Gwen Hurst later this week.

In the 106 and two-wood competitions it is all still to play for with more matches scheduled. With two 106 matches played in the past week Gwen Hurst won through 114-95 against Hilary Medley staying ahead throughout and Penny Weeks played well to defeat Mo Bond 106-48.

In the men’s’ competitions, David Roberts bagged the last semi-final berth in the four-wood singles championship with a 22-14 win over Andrew Skudder and also qualified for the quarter-finals of the two-wood with an 18-7 victory over Tony Mackness.

Andrew Cardy, already qualified for the two- wood quarter-finals made it a clean sweep with maximum points in his last game in the group stages against Tony Mackness, 21-7.

In Group One of the two-wood competition Andrew Skudder has given himself a great chance of qualifying for the quarter-finals registering two draws and a nail biting win 14-13 over Mike Clark.

In this match there was a great comeback from Mike who had been 5-13 down and clawed his way back before Andrew registered the all-important winning shot on the last end!

Andrew will have to await the result of the last group match between Ralph Cartwright and Peter Hillman.

Congratulations, must go to Paul Griffin and Peter Foreman, who scored four shots over the last two ends to reach the final of the men’s pairs, beating Bryan Membery and Tony Mackness 14-12.

At one stage it looked like it was their opponents who were going to win but a late rally saw them through.

Weather over the next few days may disrupt planned games, but the competitions are on schedule for a mid-September finish.