CROQUET HISTORY: The Relation of Billiards to Croquet

September 1913
The Billiard Monthly
by the English Amature Billiard Association

There is no outdoor game that has so close an affinity to billiards as the modern game of croquet. This is, indeed, so strikingly the case that we have no hesitation in cordially recommending croquet to all enthusiastic billiard amateurs and to all billiard professionals who desire to keep fit during the summer and to keep their billiard eye well in, in preparation for the winter. We would go even further and hazard the conviction that if professional billiardists chose thoroughly to study and practise the game of croquet, they would develop that pastime out of all present knowledge and belief and find a public for the game and a vocation in it, just as professionals have long since done in cricket, in football, and in golf.

Incidentally reference may be made to the somewhat singular fact that, whereas professionalism is firmly established in such a game as cricket and football, in which there is no direct competition between individual players as there is In croquet, the last named game has never yet, so far as we are aware, produced its professional player. This means, in effect, that it is still far from having attained to a perfect exposition. There are many excellent amateur croquet players, with whom scientific position play and the consecutive running of a long series of hoops is the usual thing, but there still remain many refinements of technique and finesse which have not yet been discovered and which, in all probability, never will be until the game is professionally exploited and the whole of its possibilities vividly shown up.

That croquet has enormously developed on the scientific side with its revival some years ago cannot be disputed.

Indeed, in The Gentlewoman of a week or two ago there was a lament that "the good old-fashioned croquet game tends to become ultra-scientific in these days." The "old fashioned" croquet game was one in which the hoops were twice the -width of the diameter of the ball and in which, when it became necessary to make a stop-shot—corresponding with a stun-shot at billiards— the player was permitted to put his foot on his own ball and make what was known as a "tight croquet." All this is now altered. The ball* can only just scrape through the hoops and the player who would do anything at all must have at least a dozen totally different stroke manipulations in his repertoire.

But amongst the best croquet players position play, as it is understood in billiards, has only yet been advanced to a certain point, and consists chiefly in the sending forward of the second, third, and fourth balls (with one or other of them held at the centre) in such a way that, whenever a hoop is negotiated in succession a ball shall be found at hand to play upon. There is also, of course, a great deal to be accomplished from the vantage points of the corners and the boundaries generally. But when all this is recognised and admitted, it would, we think, be idle for anyone to contend that the game has attained to anything like its possibilities on the scientific side, and these possibilities will, in all probability, never be revealed until croquet is taken up professionally and the circuit of the hoops is effected in so short a time that rules for professionals will have to be introduced— as they have been in billiards under which certain phases of the game are subjected to limitation.

Our main object, however, in drawing attention to the relation of billiards to croquet is to accentuate the fact that in the latter game there are really already existent the essential feature? of what for some generations past has been asked for under the suggested name of lawn billiards. But it must be obvious that billiards cannot be played upon a lawn with a cue, and that if even a cue, curved at the end and provided with runners beneath, could be employed, a mallet, with its free swing, would still prove to be better.

That being so. the questions of boundaries versus cushions and of hoops versus pockets alone remain to be considered, and here, again, the croquet solution would seem to be the best that could be hit upon.

Really, the affinities between billiards and croquet are strong, and it may even be that billiards was originally played on lawns with a sort of mace, and that both games have a similar origin.

The outstanding feature in croquet is position play, and in this connection a singular circumstance may be noted.

In billiards, ordinary players rarely, and lady players scarcely ever, play primarily for position. The immediate score is everything. In croquet, on the other hand, the veriest novice grasps at the outset the vital necessity of position play, and almost instinctively drops into it. Indeed, one may venture to assert that the same person who, at billiards, would smash up a break opening, would play the necessary gentle position stroke at croquet as a matter of course, and where equally failing to apply double strength for position purposes at billiards would not dream of neglecting this essential aid to continuance at croquet. A good billiard player, watching a croquet novice place the two balls together prior to making a stroke knows at a glance whether the direction in which the mallet head is aligned is the correct one or not for the purpose aimed at and whether the amount of swing and strength employed are more or less than the stroke demands. The throw-off angle of croquet balls as compared with billiard balls is less in the degree of their lesser density, but the mind quickly becomes accommodated to this difference and the rules governing aim and contact in billiards then apply with equal force to croquet.

If, for example, it be desired to drive both balls in a somewhat similar direction and to a distance, considerable strength must be applied, but if the idea is to cut one's opponent away to the side the long shot towards one's own objective may be made with very little strength. So that the old billiard rule: "The fuller the contact the more the strength; the thinner the contact the less the strength" applies equally to the sister outdoor game, and, this being so—and there can be little doubt of the fact—these. lines recalling to billiard players what croquet actually is, may not be without their use.

Lord Ripon, King George's recent host, and a famous grouse shot, plays billiards as well as many professionals, says a Daily Sketch writer, who adds: "When the anchor stroke was the rage I saw him make a break of 1,400 at the Turf Club off that particular shot. R. W. Rimington- Wilson, another deadly grouse shot, was once described by John Roberts as 'able to give any amateur in England 30 in a hundred.' Jack Bayly, of 'The 11th,' who was at one time the best billiard player in the Army, without being particularly good at grouse, was one of the best all-round shots I have ever seen."

The People refer to John Roberts as of "the old school of billiards." Most players regard him as the founder of the new school.