And the bridge went on...
“Wow, Knysna has not had such a special Bridge Tournament ever before.”
This is the opinion of Heidi Atkinson of the Knysna Duplicate Bridge Club, after the club still went ahead to host this event this past weekend despite quite a few cancellations after the Knysna fires.
According to Atkinson the tournament was called the ‘pre-Oyster Festival’ tournament, “as we used to hold it during the Oyster Festival over the past 12 years. The reason for changing it this year was the fact that we couldn’t play at our normal venue, the Angling Club, due to their own fishing competition and the lack of parking over the weekend due to the cyclists and later the marathon runners,” Atkinson said.
Atkinson said that many players from out-of-town were absolutely sympathetic to Knysna’s plight, requesting that she run a collection, “and wow, we collected R5 500 for our Disaster Fund in cash which the Vineyard Church will be administrating. In addition a few players that could not come to Knysna for the tournament, but that had entered the tournament have donated their playing fee, so all in all the money raised will be about R8 000.”
This tournament was a Bridge red point event according to Atkinson, “which means it is open to the whole country for special points allocation. We had in fact many top players of South Africa taking part.”
Winners of the respective groups
Group A:
1. Hennie Fick and Henry Wu (Jhb) 2. Lotte Sorensen and Rob Stephens (Jhb)
3. Alon Apteker and Rob Sulcas (Jhb and Cape Town)
Group B:
1. Carren Emery and Carin Verburg (Cape Town)
2. Liz Cork and June Pryce (Cape Town)
3. Riekie Louw and Murray Egnos (Hermanus)
Group C:
1. Judy Blyth and Anita Croucher (Durbanville)
2. Helen Beatty and Judy Knipsheer (Cape Town)
3. Ann Ingel and Jill Mathiesen (Knysna)
The ‘Middle for Diddle’ (nearest score to ‘par’ or 50%) prize went to Adre Wiid and Tobi Vermaak from Sedgefield, whilst a special prize for newcomers was awarded to Viv Leach and Ronnie Hannweg.