Sporting

Tournament-level croquet should be familiar to those who’ve played the backyard version of the game, says Jack Chase, president of the Virginia West Virginia district of the United States Croquet Association (USCA). The equipment is the same: a mallet, heavy plastic balls, wickets and, finally, the pin, which is hit on the final stroke.

From there, it gets complicated. There are three versions of the game—six-wicket, nine-wicket and “golf” croquet. Six-wicket is the most sophisticated and is the version played by most leagues and clubs and in most tournaments. Two players must pass their balls through six wickets in a prescribed order. Each player has two turns to hit his two balls (black and blue or red and yellow); “running,” or putting a ball through a wicket, earns another shot during the same turn. Good players can monopolize the field for up to a half-hour, Chase explains. The six-wicket game is played with either International or American rules. International play is considered more of a “striker’s” game, while the U.S. version favors the strategist. Errors include hitting a ball out of bounds and hitting a ball twice without running a wicket. The granddaddy of goofs: “stuffing a wicket,” when you glance your ball off the wicket, usually producing a loud clang.

Golf croquet is the fastest-growing version of the game, according to the USCA. In golf croquet, each player has a single shot per turn. Nine universities in the U.S. have golf croquet programs, and a number of Virginia croquet clubs have built golf croquet programs to reach out to their local middle and high schools.

Nine-wicket is the backyard version most people know. USCA has no official rules for nine-wicket play, and it can be a bit of a free-for-all.

Croquet dates back to the mid-1800s in Europe, and it only gained popularity in the U.S. in the 1920s, according to the USCA. Unlike the refined game most think of today, croquet at the turn of the century was opposed by public officials and clergy for the gambling, drinking and generally bad behavior that accompanied its play. Through most of the 20th century, nine-wicket was the game of choice. USCA’s official history of the game says it wasn’t until the 1970s that U.S. players discovered the six-wicket version and organized amateur clubs and tournaments.