A Wicket Game : New Enthusiasts Take Mallets in Hand as Croquet Moves From Back Yard to Playing Court

Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life.

--”Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”

Rhys Thomas knows how Alice felt. Thomas wasn’t forced to play with hedgehogs as balls and a flamingo as a mallet. But the court in his Sherman Oaks back yard, like Alice’s in Wonderland, “was all ridges and furrows.”

Thomas nonetheless beat all comers and eventually set out on what he calls “the pursuit of the perfect croquet lawn.” It led him to various parks in the San Fernando Valley and finally to Beverly Hills, where the Beverly Hills Croquet Club plays on a lawn bowling green in Roxbury Park.

Lure of the Prize

Thomas, 32, found not only a flat, well-tended lawn, but also a number of people like himself: young men who were getting serious about croquet. The phenomenon is not merely local. Officials with clubs in the sport’s three hot spots--Florida, Arizona and California--say croquet is experiencing an influx of ambitious players who have outgrown the back-yard game.

The lure for many of them is the prize money that has entered tournament croquet. Last year, tournaments nationwide offered about $250,000 in prizes, up from about $75,000 the year before. The total is expected to grow as amateur tournaments add financial incentives to attract top competitors, most of whom are from overseas.

“All the best players are the new breed,” said Thomas, who won the championship at the Beverly Hills club late last year but has yet to play in a moneyed tournament. “They want to make a living playing croquet.”

But some people with a long history of involvement in the game are apprehensive about it developing a professional side.

“Those who are pushing for it now are very much premature,” said Jack Osborn, president of the Palm Beach-based United States Croquet Assn. “I would like to see it happen, but not if it’s to sweeten the coffers of a few promoters.”

Osborn worries that croquet could lose some of its dignity and elegance. He founded the U.S. Croquet Assn. 12 years ago and said it presently represents 300 clubs, some with only three or four members and some with more than 100.

Steady Growth

“We’ve been growing at the rate of a club a week for the last 30 months,” he said. “The growth has been particularly heavy in the resort and country-club area, because they’re in a position to provide a good court. It’s very expensive to build and maintain a tournament-quality court. Because of its cost, this is a sport for the rich man.”

The association’s magazine boasts to potential advertisers that the average household income of members is $150,000 and that one-quarter of the members are millionaires.

There is, of course, a style of croquet that’s accompanied by hot dogs instead of watercress sandwiches: the back-yard game, and it appears to be prospering too. Sales of home sets have increased over the last three years, according to Richard Corbin, president of the nation’s largest equipment maker, Forster Mfg. Co. of Wilton, Me.

“We believe the popularity is part of cocooning, doing things together at home,” Corbin said.

Sport Vs. Game

He would not disclose how many sets his company sells, but other sources estimated that between 250,000 and 400,000 home sets are sold each year.

“There are two very different games, the sport of croquet and the back-yard game,” Corbin said.

Many people grew up playing back-yard croquet with nine wickets and stakes at either end of the course, but nearly all tournaments use six wickets arranged around a center stake. Most back-yard sets still come with nine wickets, but manufacturers have begun including rules for both versions.

“The strategy for the six-wicket game is far more challenging,” said Thomas, who sometimes lights his home court with candles for play after dark. “It’s like the difference between checkers and chess.”

The Deluxe Sets

While back-yard sets retail between $25 and $200, tournament-quality sets cost up to $2,500. The four mallets are of lignum vitae or some other hardwood and may have leather-covered handles. The six wickets are cast iron, permit only an eighth-inch clearance and must sink 10 inches into the ground. The four balls are of a highly compressed synthetic material, weigh a pound each and will roll as truly as possible. The equipment comes in a lacquered wooden box.

White clothes are de rigueur. Abercrombie & Fitch recently adopted a logo of two crossed mallets for its line of croquet wear.

The tournaments are as much social events as sporting contests. A dance typically kicks off the three- or four-day event, and one or more formal dinners and dances follow.

This is the elegant sort of croquet that appeals to Charles Mureau, who has built two courts and a dome-shaped ballroom on his property in Calabasas. Mureau, 84, wears a silk ascot when he plays. He envisions hosting tournaments that are also gala parties, although the plan has been slow to materialize.

Tournament Courts

“I could have bought a yacht for what I’ve spent building these courts,” Mureau, a retired cosmetics inventor, said during a game one recent morning. “It’s taken me seven months. They’re 90 by 112 feet, and they have to be level as a billiard table. You need two of them because you have tournaments for A players and B players.”

Problems with weather and the building of a retaining wall slowed Mureau’s project, but he remains certain it will succeed financially because all the other resorts and clubs are so busy. Participants would pay between $100 and $200 for three or four days of croquet, catered lunches, a cocktail party, a dinner and dancing.

Elsewhere in California, Meadowood Resort and Country Club in the Napa Valley has two croquet courts and, in July, will host a tournament with at least $25,000 in prizes. The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego offers croquet, as do several resorts in Palm Springs.

Michael Mehas believes that Palm Springs will become the West Coast equivalent of Palm Beach, where there are 15 croquet clubs and the U.S. Croquet Assn. alone has five courts. Mehas, 48, is promoting what he says will be the game’s first $100,000 tournament, to take place in the fall.

Ready to Take Off

“Croquet is where tennis was 20 years ago,” he said. “It’s just starting to take off. The really good players have been playing five or six years, and more are coming in. The age of people in white ducks is ending. Now it’s guys hustling and trying to make a living out of it.”

Dave Collins, president of the 25-member Beverly Hills club, straddles the game’s old and new worlds. At 34, Collins has been at it five years and sees a chance to make money in the sport. But he so enjoys playing, he pays travel and entry expenses to compete in three or four tournaments a year.

Collins came in fifth out of 40 players in the recent Arizona Open. Although it was an amateur event, it attracted international talent.

“American players are not up to the level of players in the rest of the world,” Collins said. “That’s because the game was in decline here until recently, but it remained very popular in England, South Africa and Australia. The tennis boom here was the death of croquet, because lots of courts were converted to tennis.”

Mallets Available

Collins said the Beverly Hills club has tournament-quality equipment and is open to visitors.

“Anyone who comes by and wants to try it, we’ll put a mallet in their hand,” he said.

While the back-yard game can be rough-and-tumble, finesse and strategy are crucial at the tournament level. Because the grass is like a flat putting green, far greater accuracy is possible in one’s shots. A player gains extra turns by striking the balls of others and by passing through a wicket.

“You use the other balls as steppingstones, always planning at least three moves in advance,” said Maurice Marsac, a Beverly Hills club member noted for his teaching ability. “One technique is feeding your partner--moving the opponent’s ball where he can hit it. Strategy is very important.”

As Alice herself said, it can be a very difficult game indeed.