Session 1 – held on March 17th 2025.
Goals
What is your goal in croquet?
What do you want to achieve?
Improving at AC requires several steps
- Learn something new
- Practice it until you have achieved ‘unconscious competence’
- Bank it
- Move on to the next thing
Easy croquet
Some croquet strokes are easy; others are not. Try to play easy strokes.
A stroke might be ‘not easy’ for two reasons.
- It might be technically challenging, e.g. a pass roll from corner 4 sending your ball to hoop 5 and the croqueted ball to hoop 4. (No, I don’t know why you would want to do that either. I was just looking for a really difficult stoke to use as an example.)
- It might be an easy stroke to play, but it has a low probability of success (e.g. trying to roquet a ball in corner 2 when shooting from corner 1).
The usual way to ensure that a stroke is easy is to play the previous stroke correctly. Think Ahead!
Technique
Grip
Irish (both palms facing away from you)
- Good for touch.
- Bad for being able to make a long backswing.
Solomon (knuckles on both hands facing away from you)
- Good for a long backswing.
- Less good for touch.
- A good balance of backswing and touch.
“Whatever works” (as long as it does work)
All top players have their hands together.
Swing
Let the mallet do the work. You do not need heave hard at the ball. The effort you put into a stroke should be in lifting the heavy mallet. Then just guide it on to the ball.
(Can sent a ball the full width of the lawn with a one-handed grip.)
Casting
This involves swinging the mallet over the ball before hitting it. I do recommend this for lining up your roquets. Whether you should keep swinging and then hit the ball is a matter of taste.
Standard (dominant hand at the top of the shaft, knuckles away, other hand below dominant hand, palm away)
Don’t say don’t
You may have been told “don’t look up when hitting the ball”. When doing a reverse take-off, there is a natural tendency to think “don’t leave it short”. Unfortunately, your brain is surprisingly bad at processing the work “don’t”. So rather than think “don’t look up”, instead say “watch the mallet hit the ball”. This is a positive, and definite, thing to do. When doing a reverse take off, don’t think “don’t leave it short”. Rather pick a precise spot where you want your ball to land. Again, this is positive and definite.
SMOOOTH
Make your swing smooth. This really help you to achieve a consistent result. However, as we age, this is not always possible
Strokes
What are the different types of strokes?
- Roquet
- Rush
- Positioning (not trying to hit another ball)
- Drive
- Stop shot
- Roll (straight or split)
- Run the hoop
Roquet
The object of this stroke is to hit another ball.
- Stalk the ball
- Line up your stroke
- Swing smoothly
- Follow through. It helps to keep the shot straight.
What is your critical distance? This is the distance for which you have a 50% chance of hitting the other ball. If the distance of the ball to be roqueted is greater than your critical distance, consider what will happen if you miss and consider getting close to the ball and using a bisque to continue.
Rush
The object of this stroke is to hit another ball and to move that ball to a specific position.
Practice rushing a specific distance. If the striker’s ball is sliding when it hits the other on, the rushed ball will go further than if the striker’s ball is rolling when it hits the other ball.
Rushing a ball that is over 1 yard away is difficult. Concentrate on hitting the ball dead centre. That is more effective than blasting away.
To rush a ball at an angle (cut rush), imagine placing a ball against the target ball lined up in the direction you want the rushed ball to go. Just as you would if you were playing a croquet stroke. Then play the stroke to get the striker’s ball into that exact position.
Positioning
Sometimes, your best cause of action is just to hit your ball to a specific position; often off the lawn. Check carefully that the position you are aiming at is indeed the position you intend. Remember that if the ball goes off the lawn, it will come back on 1 yard.
Croquet strokes in general
When playing a croquet stroke, have exact targets for where you want each ball to end up. Then give priority to one ball and trust your swing to send the other one to the correct place. The priority ball will depend on the stroke. If you are placing a pioneer, usually give priority to the position of the pioneer. When playing a hoop approach, give priority to the striker’s ball.
Line up your balls carefully. The croqueted ball will travel along the direction through the centres of the two balls, regardless of the stroke that you play.
Make sure that the two balls are in contact. Legally, they should be (although if they do fall apart, this is not a fault), but the main reason that is that if the balls are not touching, you will get an inconsistent result. This might mean treading on one or both of the balls. This is something you can do just as well as the world champion, so do it.
In a legal croquet stroke, the striker’s ball will never travel in the direction that the mallet is swinging unless this is a perfectly straight stroke. Even attempts at perfectly straight strokes rarely result in that outcome.
The drive
- Line up your stroke
- Swing smoothly
- Follow through
What is your ratio for a drive? This is the ratio of the distances that the croqueted ball and the striker’s ball travel. It is typically somewhere between 3:1 and 4:1. It does not matter what your personal ratio is, but you should know what it is. Knowing your personal ratio will tell you if you should be playing a drive, a stop shot, or a roll.
A drive is the most accurate way of sending a pioneer to the next-but-one hoop.
The stop shot
The aim of a stop shot is to send the croqueted ball a certain distance while the striker’s ball moves much less far. The distance ratio will be larger than for a drive.
In playing a stop shot, the aim is to hit the striker’s ball, and then to stop the mallet with no follow through. The extent to which this can be achieved will depend on your technique and on how far the balls are travelling. It is possible to get a huge ratio if you are barely moving the striker’s ball.
There are (at least) two ways of playing a stop shot. You can swing the mallet and at the moment of impact with the striker’s ball, hit the heel of the mallet into the ground, thereby stopping further forward motion. Alternatively, you can swing the mallet, intending no follow through, and actively stop the mallet with the muscles in your hands. Which is better for you may depend on your grip, how well you can time hitting the heel of the mallet into the ground, and how strong your hands are.
A stop shot is the most accurate way of positioning the striker’s ball just in front of the hoop, ready to run the hoop in the next stroke.
The roll
The aim of a roll stroke is to send the two balls comparable distances. In order to achieve this you need to hit down on the striker’s ball with the face of the mallet tilted forwards.
There are several types of roll strokes.
Half roll
The ratio of the distances travelled is 2:1.
Put your upper hand at the top of the mallet shaft and the lower hand half way down. Take your stance so that you will hit down on the striker’s ball by standing closer to the ball than for a drive. Play the stroke with follow through.
Three-quarter roll
The ratio of the distances travelled is 3:2 (approx.).
Put your upper hand at the top of the mallet shaft and the lower hand at the bottom. Doing exactly this may be uncomfortable, so do what is practical. Take your stance so that you will hit down on the striker’s ball more than in the half roll. Play the stroke with follow through.
Full roll
The ratio of the distances travelled is 1:1.
Put your upper hand half way down the mallet shaft and the lower hand at the bottom. Take your stance so that you will hit down on the striker’s ball, again even more so than for the three-quarter roll. Play the stroke as a punch with follow through.
Pass roll
The striker’s ball will travel further than the croqueted ball. Consequently the two balls must travel in different directions.
Put both of your hands well down the mallet. Take your stance so that you will hit down on the striker’s ball, again even more so than for the full roll. It is hard to get a lot of distance with this stroke, but that can come with practice. Play the stroke as a punch with no follow through.
Split shots
Split shots are some of the most difficult strokes to get right. You want to move the two balls in very different directions.
The thin take-off
A thin take-off is where you move the striker’s ball while moving the croqueted ball hardly at all. It is important that the croqueted ball moves, so generally make the take off a little thicker so there is no danger off that ball not moving. The striker’s ball WILL move in the direction perpendicular to the line joining the two balls. In fact, counterintuitively, this is truer with a slightly thicker take off than with a very thin one.
Big splits
If you need to play a split sending the balls somewhere between 30 and 60 degrees to each other, then decide where the two balls should end up, draw an imaginary line between the two end positions, find the mid-point of that line, and that is the direction in which you should swing.
90 degree splits are hard to judge the distance since it is hard to judge the angle at which you should swing you mallet on the lawn. But there is one magic case. This is the 30 degree angle. Line up the top of the striker’s ball with the edge of the croqueted ball and swing on this line. This will result in you swinging at 30 degrees to the line through the balls. You can always judge this angle on the lawn, so make good use of this shot.
Running a hoop
Stalk the ball.
Line up your swing carefully. You MUST miss the near wire. No exceptions.
Swing smoothly. Jabbing at the ball is likely to send it in the wrong direction.
Make sure that your ball is rolling (and not skidding) when it reaches the hoop.
