This guide was written by Dave McLaughlin, and any opinions expressed are mine, and mine alone. The management of Glasgow Croquet Club and of the Scottish Croquet Association are in no way responsible for any comments herein.
First, let me ask you a rhetorical question: do you have a croquet handicap? If the answer is yes, then this introductory guide is probably not for you. If you didn't know there was such a thing, then you've probably never been exposed to the competitive game.
So you're curious about croquet. But what do you already know about it? If you've never tried it, you probably think it's a genteel pastime of elderly vicars. Vicars may play it, but genteel it isn't.
Perhaps you have tried it: you may even have a croquet set in your garden. In that case, you probably feel that "genteel" isn't an appropriate adjective; "vicious" would be better. You know there are two balls on each side, and the object is to keep your two together, and the opponents' far apart. Well, that's true, as far as it goes, but there's much more to croquet than that.
Croquet is an international sport, presided over by the World Croquet Federation. The rules, or "laws" of the game are published by the (English) Croquet Association, with the agreement of the Australian Croquet Association and the New Zealand Croquet Council.
Croquet has been likened to snooker, with which it has a lot in common, particularly the concept of a "break". But there are two major differences that affect the way the game is played. Firstly, in croquet it is more difficult to hit another ball; secondly, if you can hit another ball, it is easier to make a big break.
The importance of that last point cannot be overestimated. The basic principles of the game can be a little difficult to grasp (certainly if you're just reading about it: less so if you actually "have a go"). But once you've got over that hurdle, tactics become very important. In snooker, the best players might think about where they want the cue ball to come to rest four or five strokes ahead: in croquet, even moderate players routinely plan ten strokes ahead!
With the exception of a very few tournaments (none of them in Scotland) there are no separate competitions for men and women in croquet - not many sports can make that claim!
Croquet has a handicap system, which allows near-beginners to take on international players and have a fair chance of winning.
Croquet is a game for all ages, though I wouldn't recommend it as a principal form of exercise for the under-40s - it's hardly aerobic. For younger players, who keep fit by chasing fast-moving balls around, croquet is a chance to exercise the mind while the body takes it easy for a while.
For older players, croquet does have some physical benefit. It can keep you walking about for three hours (comparable to a round of golf). So if you feel you're getting on a bit for more energetic sports, and there's nothing left but golf or bowls, why not try it? You'll find it much more intellectually stimulating than those other games and, with the handicap system, you can take on the best players in the world. With enough practice, you might even beat them level!
The first thing that may strike you when you see a competition croquet lawn or court is the size of the thing. It's big: 35 by 28 yards! Unlike most garden croquet lawns, the boundaries are marked and carefully measured (to 6 inches tolerance). It is also likely to be very flat, and the grass cropped short - a bowling green is an ideal surface.
The fixtures or "furniture" are also quite unlike those found in the average garden set. The hoops are not bent wire, which can conveniently be stretched to span 2 ball diameters: they are cast iron, 5/8 inch in diameter, set rigidly in the ground. The gap between the uprights is 1/8 inch greater than the diameter of the balls - less for some competitions! In the centre of the lawn is an 18 inch high wooden peg, which can get in the way during the course of the game, but which is essential to finishing it - see below.
There are four balls: blue, red, black and yellow. If a second game is to be played simultaneously on the same lawns, the "second colours" of green, brown, pink and white are used (now why are snooker balls the same colours?) The balls weigh 1lb and are hard enough to do you serious damage if you get in their way.
The last essential piece of equipment is the mallet. All the equipment described above is supplied by the club, but not the mallet. When you first try croquet, the only thing you will be expected to provide is a pair of shoes with soft, flat soles, but pretty soon you will want your own mallet. Once upon at time, mallets were of all-wood design, with cylindrical heads (often bound with brass). Now, the heads tend to be rectangular in section, with hard synthetic end-faces, and shafts can be glass fibre, carbon fibre or occasionally nylon. You might occasionally see tubular aluminium shafts, but these are very rigid, and can limit a player's repertoire of strokes. Mallets are generally made to order, with shaft length, head length and weight to the player's specification, and cost from about £40 up (compare that with a set of golf clubs!)
In tournament play, players are, shall we say, "encouraged" to wear predominantly white. Personally, I see little point in this, but I won't make a crusade out of it. Croquet players don't "wimp out" at the sight of a light drizzle, so in Scotland waterproofs are often helpful.
I have coached many beginners to croquet, and all of them seem to find it difficult to grasp all of the ideas in one go. Generally, I find it most effective to give them a mallet and tell them what to do, and why, while they play, answering any questions as we go. Usually, after about three to six hoops, everything clicks into place. Unfortunately, dear reader, this medium is not amenable to such an interactive tutorial style.
I'll attempt to explain the object of the game. But first, here is a picture of …
The object of the game is to put some balls through some hoops, but which balls? Which hoops? And in what order? Does it matter? Why am I reading this? Each side has two balls, with blue and black playing against red and yellow. In doubles play, each player plays one ball; in singles, each plays two. The object is to put both balls through twelve hoops each. "But", I hear you say, "there are only six hoops in the diagram." Aha! The cunning fiends who devise the laws have decreed that each ball must pass through each hoop twice, once in each direction! And yes, the order does matter.
The diagram shows each hoop labelled with its number in the sequence in which they are to be run (sorry, a piece of jargon just slipped in there). For a little more jargon, the first six hoops are known by the numbers: "hoop 1", "hoop 2", etc. The next four are known by numbers with the suffix "-back". The last two are known as "penult" (for fairly obvious reasons); and "rover" (for more obscure reasons).
After a ball has run all twelve hoops, it can be made to strike the centre peg, whereupon it is removed from the game. If you do that with both balls, then you have won the game, which is a good thing. If you remove one of your balls while the other still has lots of hoops to go, this is generally seen as a bad thing, for reasons that, I hope, will become apparent below.
If you look closely at the diagram, you will see two faint lines along the western half of the south boundary and the eastern half of the north boundary (The boundaries of croquet lawns are always described thus, regardless of geographic orientation.) These are known as the "baulk lines" and are not actually marked on the lawn. They do have a purpose, which is described below.
The two players (or two sides in doubles) take alternate turns. At the start of each turn, you can (almost always) choose to play either of your two balls, and you have one stroke. Things start to get interesting if you run your hoop, or if you hit another ball, because then you get to play some more strokes.
At the start of the game, there are no balls on the lawn. If you are first to play, you place a ball at any point on either of the two invisible baulk lines, one yard in from the boundary. The ball is then struck with the mallet. About the only really interesting thing you can do at this point is to run hoop 1, but this is difficult, because it is six yards away from the nearest point on "A baulk" as the south baulk line is known. A safer thing to do is to send the ball off the lawn far enough away from either baulk line that it is difficult for your opponent to hit it (and dangerous to try).
Any time a ball leaves the lawn, it is replaced one yard in from the boundary. To measure this, it is helpful to know how long your mallet is.
If you are second to play, you have more options. You can attempt hoop 1, you can shoot at the opponent's ball, or you can ignore both and do your own thing. If you shoot at the ball and miss, finishing near it, then you will leave "oppo" a very short shot later on: that is why it is dangerous to try.
In third and fourth turns, you have all the options already mentioned, plus the option of joining up with your partner ball. These are the only two turns of the game when you do not have the option to play either ball - you must introduce your second ball to the game. Oh, all right; you also don't have that option if one of your balls has been "pegged out" and removed from the game.
If you manage to run your hoop, you get an extra stroke - dead simple.
If you hit or "roquet" another ball (yours or the opponent's), things get more complicated. If the target ball has gone off the lawn, or within a yard of the boundary, you put it a yard in from the boundary (without penalty). You then place your ball in contact with the target ball (anywhere you like, as long as it's touching) and take "croquet". That is to say, you strike your ball in such a way as to cause both balls to move (If the croqueted ball does not move, or if either ball goes off the lawn, your turn ends.) You then have one more stroke, a "continuation stroke".
With the continuation stroke, you want either to run your hoop or to roquet a different ball and repeat the process. You may not roquet the same ball twice in one turn, unless you've run your hoop in between.
After running your hoop, you may use the extra stroke to roquet any ball, and continue as before, using all the other balls to work your way towards your next hoop.
So now you know the basic rules of the game. Given an understanding of the basics, most garden croquet players rapidly reach the conclusion that the best thing to do is to split up the opponent's balls and make sure yours are left close together. They then learn that it is "best" to take both balls round the hoops together. If they are playing red and yellow, say, they will run hoop 1 with yellow, then make sure red has run hoop 1 before attempting to make hoop 2 with yellow. This is very short-sighted.
It is quite possible for yellow to run all twelve hoops in a single turn, and leave the opponent with an impossibly long shot in the next turn. When the opponent misses, red then goes round twelve hoops in the next turn, finishing by sending yellow onto the peg in a croquet stroke and then striking the peg itself - game over! (In fact, the best players have become so adept at this that the top tournaments are played under "advanced rules", which are intended specifically to prevent this. I shall not discuss advanced rules here.)
The easiest way to take a ball round lots of hoops is to use all three other balls as stepping stones. Using all four balls in this way is called a "four-ball break".
A four-ball break requires a variety of different kinds of croquet stroke, where the balls are split at different angles, and travel different relative distances. Most beginner's guides to croquet will tell you how to play the strokes first, then how to string them together in a break. But that is not my way!
Most croquet guides assume that you will learn to play the game by reading the guides. Before you can attempt a four-ball break, you need to have a repertoire of strokes sufficient to the task. This is a short introductory guide, and the intention is to interest you in the game. So first I'll explain the interesting bit: what it is you're attempting to do. Only then will I go on to the boring stuff about practice, practice, practice.
First, take a look at the diagram below.
This diagram shows the balls already set up for a four-ball break, starting at hoop 1, by red (or blue). The important points are (assuming you're playing red):
But how do you get into this position? Well, in practice, it's very rare to have the break set up this well before making the first hoop. Generally, at the start of your turn, the balls will be far apart, perhaps on the boundaries. If you're lucky, your balls will be close together. You will generally work your way around the other three balls, taking croquet from each, until you get to your hoop. After making your hoop, you repeat the process to make your next hoop, but this time the balls are further in from the boundaries. After three or four hoops, you might have all the balls out in the court, and the break under control (At that point, I usually stick in my hoop, leaving the opponent a two-foot shot to pick up a laid break.) Find that baffling? Well, read on, and come back to it later. It will make sense, once you have a better understanding of the sequence of strokes.
As I said, it's rare to have the break set up this well before making the first hoop. The exception is in the case of a handicap game. To understand this, you need to know something about the handicap system.
Each croquet player has a handicap, which is a number from 20 down to about -2 (yes, minus). In a handicap game, the higher-handicap player has a number of free turns, known as "bisques" equal to the difference in handicaps. So if you, as a 20-handicap beginner, were playing a "scratch" (0-handicap) player, you would have 20 bisques. Your opponent would normally keep count of these by putting 20 sticks in the ground at the start of the game. At any time when your turn would normally end, you may take a bisque (oppo pulls it out of the ground), and you play on, roqueting any balls again, as if it were a whole new turn. The only restriction is that you must continue to use the same ball.
A scratch player is perfectly capable of taking both balls round in two turns. So you must try to finish before she has had two turns. In that situation, you, playing red, could use two bisques to set up the position shown in the diagram, then take another bisque (if you've roqueted blue since the last one), and play the break as follows.
You roquet blue. You place red in contact with blue and, with the croquet stroke, put red in front of hoop 1 and blue just the other side of the hoop. You run the hoop, and can now roquet blue again. You do so, and place red in contact with blue to take croquet. On the croquet stroke, you send blue to hoop 3, with red finishing near black. With your continuation stroke, you roquet black gently. In the croquet stroke, you play a "thin take-off". In this type of croquet stroke, you place red in contact with black, so that the line between their centres is almost at right angles to the direction you want red to travel, then strike red in almost that direction, but slightly towards black (remember black must move). Take a look at the diagram below, which shows the final position, after the take-off.
Notice the positions of the balls. You have:
Compare this with the position in the diagram at the start of the break. What's the difference? You're one hoop further on, you have a ball at each of your next two hoops (previously blue was at hoop 1 and yellow at 2; now yellow is still at 2 and blue has leap-frogged ahead to become what's known as the "pioneer" at 3), and the break has pivoted around black (black is known as the "pivot"). Repeat around the next eleven hoops, using bisques as necessary, "lay up" (set up the balls at the end of the break) with a good "leave" (the positions of the balls at the end of the break), and repeat with yellow.
A very good leave in a handicap competition is shown in the diagram below.
Here blue and black are "cross-wired" at hoop 1 (i.e. diagonally spaced, either side of the hoop, unable to hit each other), and red and yellow are in corner 3 (the corners are numbered clockwise, the same as the nearest hoops), lined up so that yellow can "rush" red (i.e. roquet it hard in a chosen direction) to hoop 2. If you're not so confident about your rushing a ball such a long distance, try corner 2.
From this position, if blue or black misses a very long shot, yellow can immediately send red to hoop 2, take off to the ball remaining at hoop 1, and start the turn with three of the four balls already set up to make for a relatively easy break.
In this section, I might explain:
At the time of writing, I feel like mine is a voice crying in the wilderness. If anybody wants more, I'll write it, but please ask me for it! In the meantime, I would refer croquet beginners to:
This page is maintained by
Dave McLaughlin
Copyright © 1996 Dave McLaughlin
Last updated: 8 September 1996