Bermuda Bowl

Well it's all over. Congratulations to USA2, China, and England.

I have to say I was surprised by both the Venice Cup and the Senior Bowl. I really did expect the French and German women to do better, and the English seniors barely squeaked into the competition (they actually were out on a tie-breaker, always a miserable state of affairs, but got in when the Netherlands withdrew). That's not to say that the winners are unworthy, far from it. The Chinese women (and the men in the Bermuda Bowl too, for that matter) were consistently strong and dangerous, and took the final by the scruff of the neck. The English seniors climbed rapidly to the top of the round robin ladder and stayed there, and showed true quality in the final when Poland jumped out to an early lead. Very well done by all.

I read somewhere that Bobby Wolff's assessment of the Bermuda Bowl knock-out was that the best eight teams had qualified, and that there wasn't a weak player to be found anywhere. I often don't agree with him, but in this case I think he was exactly right. It would be easy to glance at the final result and assume that Italy and the USA are just streets better than anybody else. But if you watched some of the competition, you would know that it's much closer than in some prior years. All eight of the teams in the knock-out were very strong indeed, and if Italy and the USA are the strongest, it's not by very much of a margin.