Croquet pro Mack Penwell takes a shot during the American Six Wicket tournament Friday at Pinehurst Country Club in Pinehurst. ‘It’s a game of strategy,’ he says.
Staff photo by Brian Thorpe
His ability to win the prim lawn game got him out of the chicken slaughterhouse
where he worked as a federal inspector. It kept him from having to farm
for a living the way his father had.
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Croquet pro Mack Penwell takes a shot during the American Six Wicket tournament Friday at Pinehurst Country Club in Pinehurst. ‘It’s a game of strategy,’ he says. Staff photo by Brian Thorpe |
“It’s a long damn way from tobacco fields in Bertie County to a croquet court in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida,’’ Penwell says.
Penwell sat smoking cigarettes this week on one of the porches at Pinehurst Resort and Country Club. People call him “Big Mack.’’ He’s a burly man with tanned skin and wavy brown hair. His beard starts just below his plump chin.
He smokes Misty cigarettes. It’s a women’s brand, he says, but he doesn’t care. His girlfriend smokes them, so he tried one. They taste fine and they’re cheap.
His father was a sharecropper in Aulander, an eastern North Carolina town of about 80 people.
Penwell played tackle on the football team. He picked tobacco for his father.
The town had a small group that had been playing croquet since the turn of the century. When Penwell was in school, the group played on a court behind the public library. In the game, heavy on etiquette, players hit wooden balls through a series of small gates.
The group tried to get Penwell to play. “I thought it was the craziest thing I’d ever seen,’’ he said.
He had no interest until after he had been to Vietnam as a soldier and returned home.
A man named Francis Tayloe taught him strategy. Tayloe was headed for the U.S. Croquet Hall of Fame. The athletics came naturally for Penwell.
Croquet intrigued him. It’s a mind game.
“Golf is you against the course,’’ Penwell said. “Croquet is you, the course and your opponent.’’
“It’s so much fun to outwit someone.’’
Croquet was his passion. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture was his living. He was a food inspector for the federal agency. He worked in a slaughterhouse in Lewiston.
But already doors had started to open. He remembers driving up to the front gate of the Palm Beach Polo Club in a pickup truck with a camper shell attached. The guard told him how to get to the service entrance. But he drove in the front gate when he explained why he was there. He parked his truck in between a Mercedes and a Rolls Royce -- a long way from tobacco fields in Bertie County.
Pinehurst started a croquet program, something Tayloe had pitched to the country club. Tayloe died not long after the croquet courts were built.
He moved from Aulander, got a job at a Perdue plant in Rockingham and started at the country club.
The program had been handed off to a woman named Peyton Ballenger, who had a host of other activities to run.
“I was completely out of my environment,’’ Penwell said. He offered Ballenger a trade. He would work with her on her croquet game if she would teach him how to act around rich people and country clubs. She agreed, teaching him how to eat in the dining room and how to dress. She was a great athlete and became one of the best women players in the country.
Penwell likes the world croquet opened up. It’s a whole lot prettier than a slaughterhouse, he said, much less hard than farming.
But he didn’t always feel comfortable in it. He has less education and less money than the people he meets. He wasn’t always accepted at first.
He remembers a black tie party at Tavern on the Green in Manhattan.
The cast of the television show “60 Minutes’’ was there.
Mac Penwell, left, takes a break during his game Friday to socialize with Dave Welden, center, and Bob Cherry, both of whom drove up from Georgia for the croquet tournament. Staff photo by Brian Thorpe |
The environment has changed Penwell some. He spends his days dressed all in white, a tradition upheld by the players in the Pinehurst Croquet Club.
But he has changed his surroundings a bit too, bringing some country to the club. He won the U.S. Croquet Association National Championship and was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
But he’s just as proud of the Country Boys Tournament. He started the men’s tournament, which is going on this weekend at Pinehurst Resort and Country Club.
The resort doesn’t seem to mind most years when Penwell puts out a display of hay bales and a split rail fence for the tournament.
Penwell is playing in the tournament. For a man who once played croquet all day, he doesn’t play anymore. He’s busy with lessons and clubs. Plus there are few people he enjoys playing with.
Pinehurst has devoted 70,000 square feet to immaculate croquet courts. A 9-hole golf course could just about fit in that space.
Croquet doesn’t make money for the resort. Quite the opposite. The resort just spent $180,000 rebuilding the courts, Penwell said. He was hired full-time almost five years ago.
The resort likes the look of people dressed in white playing a game known for its manners at the main entrance to the golf clubhouse, Penwell said.
The sport will never be on the level of golf. Pinehurst has about 150 members involved in lawn sports, from croquet to lawn bowling. Croquet had a spurt of growth in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “I don’t see a whole lot of new faces’’ anymore, Penwell said.
The last time he was back in Bertie County, people were playing volleyball
on the old croquet court.