CROQUET COACHING: Stop Shots CROQUET COACHING: Stop Shots 19-20 January 2006
Nottingham Board
collected by Leo Nikora
John Riches wrote:
During the time I spent away from the game some new coaching problems appear to have arisen. Perhaps other coaches have found solutions, and if so then I would like to hear what they have discovered.
One problem arises from the fact that many players have changed to heavier mallets (from 3 pounds 4 ounces to three pounds 8 ounces) with lower balance-points (i.e. a lower centre of gravity). It is believed that this improves roqueting, rushing and hoop-running by allowing the player to derive greater force from the weight of the mallet rather than using muscle-power. Perhaps that does not explain it very well, but the idea seems to be that if you need to provide less force through your hands you can use them to better control direction.
But the problem is that with these heavy mallets it can be difficult to play an acceptable stop-shot. I would want to at least be able to play a stop-shot from the yard-line in front of hoop 1 to send a ball one yard in front of hoop 2 while holding position to run hoop 1. This involves a stop-ratio of only 4.5:1, when the older books suggest that a ratio of 8:1 or even 10:1 should be achievable. Players are asking me to help them improve their stop-shots and so far I am unsure of the way to do it, other than to tell them to get a lighter mallet which they do not want to do. Is there a technique for playing good stop-shots with a heavy mallet?
Everyone agrees that a good stop-shot requires exact timing which can only be developed by plenty of practice, and that it is necessary to stop the forward movement of the mallet at (or just after) the instant the mallet contacts the ball, but on other aspects of stop-shotting there seems to be a surprising amount of disagreement and a wide variety of ideas. For example -
1. Some say that a flexible shaft can be used to facilitate better stop-shots, while others say that the shaft needs to be as rigid as possible.
2. Some say that the best way is to move one or both hands about half-way down the mallet handle and hold it very tightly. This is supposed to make it easier to arrest the forward momentum (inertia) of the heavy mallet-head. Others teach the use of a long grip, saying that if you move your hand(s) down the handle it will send the striker's ball further.
3. Some insist that a Irish grip is best for stop-shots, possibly in conjunction with '2' above, while others say that a Solomon grip, or even a standard grip, is best.
4. Some say that you should stand back so that the mallet-face contacts the ball after it has passed the bottom of the swing and is moving slightly upward. The idea here is that hitting down on the striker's ball will send it further. Others stress the importance of an exact horizontal movement of the mallet with the handle exactly vertical.
5. Some say that you should hit down through the back of the ball, and if possible have the shaft tilted slightly backward on contact. The idea here is to catch the back of the ball on the mallet-face and drag it downward in an attempt to impart some backspin to the ball. Some try to achieve the same effect with the mallet initially tilted slightly forward, and moving the top of the shaft rapidly back toward the body as the mallet contacts the ball. There is no doubt that backspin can be achieved in a stop-shot - in the past I have seen it happen many times and demonstrated it to others - but it is not easy to achieve with the new mallets. Perhaps a rough mallet-face would help with this stop-shot method. I think the ball is more likely to skid or spin slightly backward if the lawn is wet.
6. Some claim that you should slacken your grip as the mallet contacts the ball. This method may work with a light mallet, but seems unlikely to be the answer with a heavy mallet.
7. Some stress the importance of using a long back=swing, while others use very little back=swing. The idea of the longer back=swing is that as it contacts the ball the mallet must be moving forward fairly rapidly in order to provide the force needed to send the front ball to hoop 2, but it must be stopped (or at least rapidly decelerated) immediately after contact. If your hands, rather than gravity, are being used to accelerate the mallet forward, then it is difficult to also use them to stop or decelerate the mallet at almost the same time.
8. Some say that you should forget about stop-shots and plan to set up and play your breaks without them.
No doubt there are yet other ideas, but is there anything definitive that can be said which might assist someone who has a heavy mallet and wants to keep on using it? Are any of the above ideas clearly correct or incorrect?
Keith Aiton added:
9. Make contact with the striker's ball on a part of the mallet face between the centre and one side or the other, which seems to allow the mallet head to twist and thereby impart less "force" into the striker's ball. I don't know if that is actually what happens, but it does seem to give a better (ie higher ratio) stop shot. It needs a bit of practice though as straying too far away from the centre of the face is not good!
David Turner wrote:
I have done some research on stop shots and my conclusions are that the the effectiveness of a stop shot depends on three things:
1) The mass of the mallet
2) The hardness of the mallet face in comparison to that of the ball.
3) The players control over any follow through by the mallet.
If you increase 1) the mallet will physically try to follow through at greater velocity making it more difficult for the player to decelerate the mallet before it follows through appreciably.
You could improve the stop shot ratio of the mallet by fitting a softer face - but this would have a an affect on your ability toplay roll shots.
David Maugham replied about making contact off-center:
I don't tend to do this (deliberately) on straight stop shots, but do with split stop shots. It's important to get the correct side of the mallet doing it with split stop shots as, I believe, part of the effect is due to the face of the mallet being in contact with the strikers ball for a shorter period of time. One should hit the strikers ball with the face on the same side as the direction which the strikers ball will go (crappy ascii art coming up, so fixed width font used):
__
--------| / \
| -> | | __
| \ / / \
| -- | |
--------| \ /
--
Note that the opposite is also true, and can be used to "fine-tune" a particular croquet stroke to
give more or less roll.
John Riches wrote:
My thanks to those who have already passed on ideas about stop-shots. I hope there will be more. There is more disagreement among coaches about stop-shot technique than any other coaching topic I can think of.
I was already aware of Keith's suggestion re using an off-centre hit for a split stop-shot, and in fact Tom Armstrong showed it to me many years ago and I later wrote about it in one of my books . It works well. Most players with the heavy mallets, after being shown this idea and practising it for a while, can manage a stop-shot from the 1st corner to load hoop 2 and hold position to run hoop 1, but they cannot do it from the yard-line directly in front of hoop 1.
Dave Turner's suggestion that a softer mallet-face could help produce better stop-shots surprises me, as I would have thought the opposite would be true. Years ago I made my famous "Magic Mallet" with a soft rubber insert behind the plastic face at one end of the mallet-head. It made a very "soft" face, but it was completely impossible to play a stop-shot with it. By using a stop-shot action I could produce an equal roll!
Rudy Rentencort wrote:
Isn't his what Lord Tollemache talks about?
As I play with a heavy mallet, I use this all the time, especially for approaches close to the hoop. I just point the head to the other ball to get the correct side of the mallet head.
John Riches wrote:
Some further ideas which have been communicated to me privately, and for which I thank the writers:
Some players use the ground to stop the forward movement of the mallet at the desired point in the swing. This can be done by starting the swing fairly high (one player stands on tip-toes at the top of the back-swing) and jabbing down through the back of the ball onto the ground. Another method is to tilt the mallet slightly backwards (by standing a little further back from the ball) so that the "heel" of the mallet will contact the ground at the right time. This would apparently require accurate timing. [Is it likely that such a shot could be faulted due to lawn damage? - perhaps not, as although an indentation could be made, the lawn surface is unlikely to be broken.]
It seems that few, if any, have conducted objective experiments designed at finding authoritative answers to questions such as those I asked, although there must be many who are now using heavy mallets with low balance points, and who will be wanting to find the best way to play stop-shots if they have not already done so.
I am hoping that there will be some people willing to commit themselves, even if it is only an unsubstantiated opinion, on the answers to questions such as:
Is a flexible shaft an advantage for stop-shots, or should a player buying a heavy mallet opt for the most rigid shaft? Is it a good idea (technique) to put one or both hands down the handle for a stop-shot, or should both hands remain at the top of the handle? Is it best to hit down at the ball, up at the ball, or to use an absolutely flat forward swing? Is it helpful to relax the grip at the instant when the mallet contacts the ball?
Our coaching committee will conduct further experiments (if I can persuade them to do so when we get around to it), but any new ideas or reports of experiments by others could save us a lot of time and enable us to better help our players.
Jerry Stark wrote:
In your questions so far about stop shots you have not mentioned long head mallets. I had to relearn or should I say learn a new method of doing stop shots when I switched from a 9" head to a 12" head. I can do a good stop shot with a 9" head using the normal standard grip, but with the 12" it did not work, so I found that splitting the hands (one at the top the other at the bottom of the grip area) with a bit of top wrist gave me my stop shot back.
I don't think one can say which grip works best for a certain shot. It is the grip which works best for each player which should be the determining factor. I can't see many Irish grip players using the Solomon grip just because some coach says they should. The coach has to work with what is best for the player.
It is kinda scarey to me to try and teach someone just learning a stop shot to use KA's method of hitting off center. They probably don't have that good of control of the mallet at that time in their learning.
John Riches wrote:
I have not yet been asked by anyone with a very long mallet-head for advice on how to play stop-shots, but the time may not be far away. We will include this in our research eventually. (We always seem to have a long list of things waiting to be researched and experiments we want to conduct.)
It is interesting that you find helpful the hands-apart grip you have described. How good a stop-shot can you do with the 12" mallet-head? Can you do the stop-shot from the yard-line in front of hoop 1 to send a ball within a yard of hoop 2 and retain position to run hoop 1? Is the mallet also much heavier than normal, as well as having a longer head?
Re changing grips - some players use various grips for different types of shot. I have always done this myself. That is, for any particular shot I select the type of grip that I think best suits the shot. I have long thought, though without any objective justification, that the Solomon grip facilitates judgment of distance, while the Irish grip is better for accuracy of direction; and the standard grip is a compromise between the two. I suppose many will laugh at this idea, but that is how it seems to work with me. So I generally use the standard grip for hoop-running, short roquets, long rolls and most cannons; the Solomon grip for split-shots and hoop approaches; and the Irish grip for maximum-ratio stop-shots and some long roquets. I do not recommend this sort of thing to anyone I coach, as it can create problems when you have a marginal shot and are uncertain which grip to use; and it also means you have to learn to co-ordinate all the different types of swing. For hampered strokes I may use any of these grips with my hands well apart, as well as some weird grips I have developed myself.
But for a coach there is an advantage: I get to know all the things that can go wrong with any type of grip, and (in many cases) how to fix them, so whatever grip the student wants to use I can offer some useful advice.