I took up croquet shortly before I retired in 2016 and have become quite hooked on it. I prefer playing AC, but I am quite happy to join in with GC as well. I practice as often as I can, which is showing up as a steady reduction in my handicap.
Professionally, I am an astronomer and space scientist.
That describes both the weather at the Short Croquet tournament that we hosted on Saturday 5 August, and sadly, my play. The vagaries of the weather are best illustrated by two pictures of Linda Shaw (courtesy of Carol Jamieson, who helped with innumerable tasks during the day).
Ten players contented the tournament over five rounds and everyone enjoyed themselves, playing the games in a friendly, but competitive, spirit. The field was quite strong, with four out of the ten having a handicap of one or more peels. If that means nothing to you, think ‘minus handicap’.
At the lunch break, an excellent salad prepared by Minty, there was little to separate the players, but as we began the final round, three players were still in contention.
Once the final scores were in, the winner was Dave Kibble, with five wins from five games. Paul Wolff was second with four wins.
I am sure that many of the players have already ‘pencilled in’ next year’s fixture in their croquet calendar.
I was watching the AC World Championship on YouTube yesterday and I was struck by a comment that Harry Fisher made while commentating on Reg Bamford’s play in his second game against Aston Wade. Harry said “when things are going well, the roll shot does not exist”.
What he meant by this is that if you can place the balls so that your striker’s ball does not need to move a long way, then this helps to increase the accuracy of your shots, which makes your play much easier.
Of course, sometimes you need to play a roll shot, but things are so much easier if you can do without them. It is worth aspiring to achieve that.
The weekend of 15-16 July saw the AC advanced tournament being contested on our lawns. The tournament attracted a high quality field, with 6 out of the 8 players having a minus handicap.
The weather promised to be pretty dire, with rain and 40 mph winds forecast for Saturday afternoon, but in the end, we only lost about 20 minutes to rain over the whole weekend.
All those who had lunch commented very favourably on the high standard of the catering, so well done David Long (Saturday) and Phillipa, ably assisted by Sandy (Sunday). Your culinary skills were greatly appreciated.
The games were contested in a friendly spirit and all players won at least one game. The clear winner was Philip Eardley (far right in photograph), who won all six of his games. He had a net hoop score of 102, which is an average result of +17. Very impressive!
Several players attempted to do a triple peel, and while some players achieved three peels in one turn, no one succeeded in pegging out in the same turn.
After I award the trophy to Philip, he said that he was very impressed with the quality of our lawns. I find that first-time visitors often say this.
There was one mishap on Sunday. Mike Porter came into the club house saying “I finally managed to hit something”. Unfortunately it was one of our coffee mugs.
We like to play croquet on a sunny day. Sometime is it cloudy, or even raining, but playing in almost pitch darkness seems to be taking things a bit far. However, in our AC A-level league match at Basingstoke last Wednesday (31st August), Anthony’s game against Roger Barnacle went on until a hour after sunset. This is Anthony about to rush his partner ball towards the peg and peg out for a 26-21 win.
I played a vital roll in this game by walking up and down in front of the motion sensor of the club’s security light, the only source of illumination that was of any use. (Yes, that picture was taken with the light on!)
And the carrots? Not the pointy parts of a hoop, but Anthony had clearly been eating his carrots that day in order to see anything at all in the darkness.
Over the weekend of 27&28 August, eight players met to do battle in the Blewbury Super-B AC Advanced tournament. For the avoidance of confusion, I will note that the “super-B” refers to the range of handicaps that are allowed when entering the tournament (-1 to 6) and not that it is played to super-advanced rules. More than one person has been caught out by this!
The lawns were in excellent condition on the Saturday morning and all the players commented on this, mostly along the lines of “wow, they are green”. The weather was nice and sunny, if a little humid and everyone appreciated the gazebo and the umbrella.
The tournament was organised as a six-round, all-nearly-plays-all arrangement. There is not quite enough time for everyone to play each other. After the first day’s play, David Marsh was in a strong position, being the only player to have won all three of their games, including a triple peel in the first game, but there were three players chasing him on two wins each.
On the second day, there was an extra challenge due to court 2 drying out just south of hoop 1, making hoop approaches rather tricky. I was longing from some tips from Eve Murihead when I failed (again!) to get into a hoop running position for hoop 1.
Once the dust had settled, Beatrice McGlen emerged victorious. Both she and David Marsh had won five games each, but Beatrice beat David in their game.
We had two excellent lunches provided by Susan Tilbrook (on Saturday) and David Long (on Sunday).
As the players were departing, there was much talk of “see you again next year”. This is clearly a “must-do” event on the croquet calendar.
On Saturday, given that I was not on the cruise that I had planned to be on due to a bout of COVID (now fully recovered, I hasten to add), I decided to go along to watch the Blewbury AC advanced weekend tournament for entertainment and education, and I got both. It was very enjoyable watching top class players go round the lawn smoothly, putting their balls exactly where they intend to. Except that sometimes they don’t. There was the occasional poorly approached hoop, making it impossible to run the hoop, leaving me thinking “I do that!” Then the education part kicks in, seeing how the player deals with the adversity. Mostly though the level of play was very high with seven triple peels (TP) completed on Saturday plus one triple peel on opponent (TPO).
I found it very useful chatting with the players over lunch to find out how they handle particular situations. The answer is often simple; the trick is to know what that simple thing is!
Just before I left, there was an unconventional opening to a game. The first player played a supershot opening (the ball is played to south west of the peg). That is not so unusual amongst top level players. The second player shot gently at the first ball (mustn’t go through to B-baulk) and missed. The first player shot at the two balls and missed. The second player shot at the three balls (hard this time) and also missed. This left the first player with their two balls in the middle of the lawn along with one of their opponents balls. I have every confidence that they went round to 4-back and made a tidy leave from that position.
On 8 & 9 June, eight players contested the Blewbury midweek AC advanced tournament. This prestigious event attracted players from as far afield as Nottingham, Cheltenham and Hurlingham.
The weather over the two days was rather mixed, with waterproofs coming out at times to ward off the rain and to keep out the wind, while at other times, sun screen was liberally applied.
The play was of a high standard with triple peels being attempted from the off. Nevertheless, I think all of the players blobbed the occasional hoop, so it is worth remembering that next time it happens to you.
The games were all played in a friendly spirit and everyone enjoyed the two days’ play. Those players who had not been to Blewbury before were very impressed with the high quality of the lawns; the rest knew that already.
Deirdre provided a delicious healthy lunch on both days, which was enjoyed by everyone who partook of the feast.
After, the first day’s play, there were three players well placed to win the tournament, with Mark Ormerod, David Marsh and Clive Goode each having won all three of their games. Once the dust settled, David Marsh emerged victorious with six out of six wins. Congratulations to David, who said that he was off to find something to pour into the engraved drinks glass that he had just won.
In late September, 24 croquet players, including myself and Steve Fisher, gathered to do battle at the annual Greek Open Croquet Tournament, which is held at Gouvia Marina in sunny Corfu. The players had a wide range of abilities, with handicaps ranging from -1 to 18.
The tournament starts with two days of AC doubles to pick the finalists for that event. This event generated a great talking point, which is described at the end of this new item.
On the following day there was a trip along the coast on a boat to the village of Kassiopi, with most participants enjoying swimming in the sea after lunch. This is always a popular day out for relaxing from the croquet.
Then the main event, the AC handicap singles, started in earnest. Those who lost in the first round go into a ‘repechage event’, where the eventual winner gets a place in one of the semi-final games. Once you are knocked out, there is a 14-point consolation event where you can play as much or as little as you wish. I started the singles well with two wins, but I made the strategic error of losing (-1, on time, on the golden hoop) in the quarter final, which was too early to claim much of a success in the singles, and too late to make much of an impact on the 14-point event. Fortunately, Richard Peperell had organised a level play advanced, one-day mini-tournament on what was notionally our day off. I entered that and I won it with 3 out of 3 wins. Very satisfying!
Interspersed with the AC singles was a day of GC where visitors played with local club members and WAGs/HABs. This is a fun day and is a good opportunity to encourage people to play who have not done so previously.
The last day was finals day where the AC singles and AC doubles events were decided. Both games were well fought and watched by plenty of spectators, most of whom seemed to think that they knew better than the players on the lawns. In the singles, Charles Ostler (2.5) from Pinchbeck beat Ros Pimlott (14) from Bowden, and in the doubles, Gordon Mills (6) and Ken Knock (18) from Pinchbeck, beat the reigning champions Peter Wilson (3) from Fylde and Rich Quilter (9) from Corfu.
There was a very interesting start to one of the early games of AC doubles. The first player shot to the east boundary, as is common. The second player shot at that ball (a less common tactic), missed, and when the ball was placed on the yard line, it was touching the first ball. The third player now had a ‘juicy double’ to shoot at, missed, and again the ball had to be placed touching one of the other two balls. I am sure you can guess what happened next. Yes, the fourth player shot at the ‘super-sized triple’, missed, so again the ball had to be place on the outside of the balls already there. We had a four ball cannon! If this happened to you, would you know how to (a) play your shot legally and (b) play your shot optimally? (All the balls are for hoop 1.) The picture shows Richard Peperell (red) and Andrew Dutton (yellow) discussing what to do next.
Recently, Anthony Hardwicke and I took part in a C-level advanced AC tournament held over two days at Phyllis Court and High Wycombe. My reason for doing so was that I was advised last year that in order to improve, I should try some level play tournaments. That sounded a bit scary at first, but I discovered that there are level play tournaments restricted to handicaps of 8 and higher, so as a 9, I should have a reasonable chance. There were eight entrants (limited due to COVID-19 restrictions), which proved to be an excellent number. Everyone played a total of five games, organised as a Swiss tournament. You can find a full report of the tournament in the News section of the CA web site, posted on 29th July.
I enjoyed the tournament tremendously. It was well organised and played in a very friendly spirit. I would recommend giving this type of tournament a try if your handicap is in a suitable range. The entrants had handicaps in the range of 8 to 12 and everyone won at least one game. In fact, the winner and second placed players had handicaps of 9 and so did better than the two players with handicaps of 8. We are hosting a similar tournament at Blewbury on 29th & 30th August and there are still places left. I hope to see some of you there.
Oh yes, the Advanced Rules part. The tournament was played under so-called Advanced Rules, but there is only one such rule – law 36. If you are not familiar with this, then if you run either 1-back or 4-back in your turn, then on your opponent’s next turn, they can have a lift to A-baulk or B-baulk. This makes you think carefully about your leave at the end of your turn which I find adds to the enjoyment of the game. There is a bit more to it than that, but consult the laws of AC to find out more.
