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Adams Cup Attracts Record Entry

John Reynolds reports:

07/05/18: The 125th birthday edition of the Adams Cup attracted a record 34 entrants and was won by Nick Gill and Massimo Melessaccio, who hasn't played a game of fives for about 30 years and who came all the way from Istanbul to do so this weekend.

In the final they beat Richard Vaughan, who's not been on court for even longer but you wouldn't have thought it, and our guest from the Old Zuozers Renato Büchi.

The game featured some very high standard rallies but everybody was wilting a little after some three hours of fives in Saturday's sun and 28 degree temperature.

The game was hastened to a conclusion by the rule we adopted for the occasion, borrowed from CLS rules published in the nineteenth century: that the cutter (or "slogger" to use the school jargon from that time) can refuse as many serves as he likes but loses a point if he hits the cut down.

We were joined briefly by Richard Tyler, Old Edwardian and multiple Kinnaird finalist, who came along to say hello. Which was very nice of him.

After the game, we all went down The Bull, where we feasted.

The entrants, in no particular order:
OCs: John Reynolds, Stephen Kelly, Alexander Kasterine, Mark Stockton, Nicholas Gill, John Gee-Grant, Roman Heindorff, Mark Signy, Tom Gales, Jivan Navani, Saajan Shah, Nick Choustikov, Richard Vaughan, Tomos Bliss, Massimo Melessaccio, Mark George Jacobs, Abigail Jones, David Cooper, Martin East, Dan Rose, Gordon Stringer, Sam Packer

and guests: John Robinson, Ronald Pattison, Renato Buech, iDieter Buechi, Felix Buechi, Alexander Heuberger, Christoph Semmelman, Filippo Variola, Erkki Tammivuori, Alexandre de Senger, Fenno Brakel, Toby Savage

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