On a day when two women made it to the final of the Rosenblum Cup
for the first time - one of them on a furious fourth-quarter rally -
the winners of the McConnell Cup final had to overcome a big deficit
after the opening set to triumph in grand style.
The McConnell winners are Carlyn Steiner, Marinesa Letizia, Janice
Seamon-Molson, Tobi Sokolow (USA) and Tatiana Ponomareva and Victoria
Gromova (Russia). They fell behind to the American team captained by
Hansa Narasimhan 50-8 before hitting their stride, eventually winning
by a big margin.
In the Rosenblum semi-finals, one match featured Americans Roy
Welland and Rose Meltzer (the first woman to win the Bermuda Bowl - in
2001). It was not close. Meltzer posted a 61-0 second quarter and won
going away. Welland's wife, Christal Henner-Welland, is captain
of a USA-Sweden sextet. They trailed the Yadlin squad 102-68 heading
into the final quarter of their semi-final match, and Yadlin added 5
IMPs on the first board of the set. From there, it was all Henner
as they scored 45 IMPs to none for Yadlin, taking the lead on the
penultimate board to win by 6 IMPs. While the knockouts drew most
of the attention, the pairs events – Open, Women's, Seniors and IMP –
are in full swing. The Open and Women's pairs are in the semi-final
stages with some players from the knockouts eligible to drop in.
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