25 Croquet
Surbiton Croquet Club, London
Enjoyment - 70%
Success - 60%
Will try again - Yes
First timer’s recommendation – garden starter sets are available, but if your garden is anything like ours you wouldn’t get much of a game going in and amongst the craters and weeds.
After two weeks of physical pain, getting my shins kicked and then covering 22 miles of fierce Welsh hills, I thought the time was right for a return to a lawn-based sport with very little risk of injury. Most people’s undertanding of croquet comes from the Disney adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, where the Queen of Hearts plays a game involving flamingos and playing cards. I was sure that a reference to this had been made by many newcomers to the game, so I refrained, only for it to be brought up by the bloke teaching me anyway. There are two forms of croquet that dominate; association croquet which is more tactical and where you can build breaks like in snooker. This form is more advanced and is generally played by more expert players.
The other form is golf croquet, which is what we played on a balmy Wednesday evening in suburbia, which I think is the only weather and location combination permitted in the rules for a game of croquet. The game is played over 12 hoops, which you cover by going round the same six hoops twice, although not in the same order. You have two balls each and they have to be hit in turn, with each hoop being won by the player who gets their ball through the hoop first, and the game being won by the person who gets the most hoops. Straightforward so far, but the skill lies in thinking a couple of shots ahead, and being able to play your opponent’s ball out of the way before they have a chance to play it through them hoop. It isn’t as easy as it would first look, and the margin for error on the hoops is pretty minimal, meaning successful shots from distance are rare, and certainly shouldn’t be attempted on your first ever game…
When a hoop is won, the balls stay in the same position for the next hoop, meaning if you know a hoop is won/lost, you can play your next ball in anticipation of the next hoop. Anyway, it was a nice, injury-free afternoon, and I managed to nail a couple of decent shots, including the one in the video, which was worthy of a congratulatory handshake from the man showing me round.