CROQUET NEWS:  A Ruthless, Cunning Game of Croquet

25 June 2006
National Croquet Center, West Palm Beach, Florida, USA
by Ron Wiggins in Palm Beach Post, Palm Beach, Florida, USA

When standard interrogation techniques fail and a terrorist refuses to cooperate, his captors will review the Geneva rules governing treatment of prisoners of war, enjoy a good laugh and then bring in the Man in White.

A vision in alabaster from shoes to hat, the newcomer takes a seat at the table across from the prisoner where he smiles genially. He carries a mallet.

"Are you the Good Humor man?" sneers the terrorist. "Are you going to drive a Fudgsicle down my throat and give me an ice cream headache?"

"No, I am going to tell you about my croquet win over Smedley. Every detail."

Could there be anything more excruciating than hearing a play by play of a croquet match?

I think not, so I will be merciful and not tell you about my croquet debut and how my partner Wally Gress and I mopped the greensward with Ed Voss and his wife, Mayo, beginners like us to be sure, but as ruthless and cunning a couple as to ever block a wicket.

The occasion was a free croquet class offered Saturday mornings at the National Croquet Center in West Palm Beach. Jane Murray, a receptionist at the center, answered my call for Play 'til Dark retirement adventures.

"Maybe you can find out for yourself," wrote Murray, "why so many of our members say the game is addictive."

Addictive? A game you play on a lawn?

Wouldn't punting on the Thames be more interesting? The game looks only slightly more exciting than your neighbor's vacation slides of Davenport, Iowa.

You wear white. You swing a mallet the size of a small pig to roll a ball across a lawn and through narrow gates. For all the strolling about and parlor manners, the stroke is undignified. It is not made in front of the feet like a golf putting stroke. The mallet must be swung vigorously between the legs, and there is significant danger of crotchal involvement and eye-crossing injury.

And if you do strike yourself, you are denied the relief of analgesic language. There is no swearing in croquet.

"Bless my soul" and "Oh, dear" and "My stars and garters, but that hurts" are about as salty as it gets.

Before my lesson, I watched croquet balls being struck, and players going about the sedate business of lining up and executing their shots, but I failed to detect the object of the game or why it incites passion. My instructor, Archie Peck, 70, five times national croquet champion, recalled his own introduction to the game at the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach back in 1968.

"I played tennis and golf. I was blessed with natural hand-eye coordination and games came fairly easily to me. I was even something of an amateur jai-alai player. So when Joe Tankos, the Colony owner, wanted me to try croquet, I said, 'Joe, I play jai-alai, the fastest game in the world, and you want me to play the slowest?' "

Slow croquet may be, and as for exercise, you might do as well looking at flowers. But one afternoon on a croquet lawn hooked Peck good and proper.

"Croquet," he pronounced, "is a combination of putting, billiards and chess. It's chess on the grass. Like billiards, if one player gets on a roll, he can run the table, so to speak."

The learner's game is golf croquet, generally played by two against two. Each player takes turns stroking his ball through a sequence of narrow gates called wickets. Players try to get their balls in position to score and knock opponents' balls out of position. Golf croquet is essential practice for the real thing, and even serious competitors like to kick back with a game of golf croquet for relaxation.

Tournament croquet only looks relaxing. When two players compete, each has two balls that must be driven through six wickets on a manicured 105-foot-by-84-foot lawn. Croquet is a bad name. A better name would be Vampire Lawn Billiards. I say vampire because to stay alive in the game, the ball that is struck must be made to hit another ball so that it sucks two more life-sustaining shots and sets the player up to go through a wicket, earning yet another bonus shot.

A good player may keep his turn alive for 20 minutes, racking up wicket after wicket while his opponent can only stand by helplessly, smile pleasantly and think murderous thoughts.

But let's get back to golf croquet and my playing lesson. Peck stood by and helped our foursome with technique and gave strategy pointers. The golf game is all about aim and distance control. When you mean to make the ball go 30 feet, you feel pretty feeble when your strike only sends it 12 feet.

I felt feeble.

When you mean to drive an opponent's ball out of position, leaving your own sitting pretty for the next shot through the wicket, you feel pretty dumb when you miss the target ball altogether, and then you want to go smack the smirk off your opponents' dopey faces.

I felt dumb a lot.

When you're finally in A position, lined up for a short and easy scoring shot while your opponents wring their hands and grind their teeth, you feel really, really dumb when you not only fail to thread the gate, but miss the wicket completely — the basketball equivalent of the air ball.

With coaching, each of us improved. The stroke of the mallet and alignment dictates results and Archie kept showing us how a long, smooth stroke and a linear follow-through at the target produces useful results. By the time we had played a couple of practice games, we had all dramatically improved our ability to capitalize on scoring opportunities.

Even more satisfying, we all excelled in driving each others' balls to kingdom come and then frustrating the opposition by cozying our balls in front of the wicket where they couldn't score. In just two hours we had tournament-ready smirks and were well along into the wicked, under-the-breath chuckle.