TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/071690/0716170.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.9 KB | 140 lines

                                                                                AMERICAN SCENE, Page 8

Windsor, California

Such Splendor On the Grass


From the roquet to the bisque, the pass roll to the triple peel,
croquet is a game whose time has come -- until you're
"three-ball dead"

By MARGARET CARLSON


    Allan Cleland's nose grazes the grass as he stoops to draw
an imaginary line between his ball and the wicket in the final
round of the Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards' version of the World
Croquet Championship on May 19. Ireland's Simon Williams, who
the day before had been doing a fingertip push-up to calculate
a similar shot, anticipates that Cleland will attempt a triple
peel and, incidentally, not stain his immaculate summer whites.
Australia's Cleland, like 23 of the other best players from
Ireland, England, New Zealand, Canada, Australia and the U.S.,
has come to what some consider the best croquet court in the
world to wrest the title from New Zealand's Stephen Jones.
"Bloody good," says Williams of the three-ball break. Cleland
goes on to defeat Jones, 26-12, in a 90-minute match. The
prize: an Omega watch, not much to those on the pro golf or
tennis circuits but a king's ransom on the croquet tour and
another sign that the once upper-crust game is trickling down.

    Croquet as played in this stretch of paradise is a far cry
from the backyard game forced on kids to keep them from killing
one another before the hot dogs are served. The grownup version
is a maze of complicated tactics, arcane terminology and
bizarre rules played against a ticking stopwatch. A good player
must have the wrists of Jack Nicklaus, the concentration of
Bobby Fischer and the eye of Minnesota Fats. Ricocheting at
precisely the right spot off the steel wicket is one way to get
the grapefruit-size ball through the narrow hoop, anchored an
unforgiving 9 in. into the ground with a clearance of
one-sixteenth of an inch. A bewildering array of possible shots

split shot) and others, like the bisque, the take-off, pass
roll, cut rush and cannon, that are too intricate to describe
-- must be calculated  a dozen moves in advance if a player is
to peg out for a finish against a single stake in the center
of the lawn. It helps to have a sadistic streak since it is as
important to hamper an opponent with a difficult "leave" as it
is to advance one's own game.

    Under American rules, a player also has to worry about
"deadness," a state almost as final in croquet as it is in
life. A player whose ball has hit another ball is considered
"dead" on that ball. He cannot hit it again unless he passes
through a wicket. This can leave a player cooling his heels on
the sidelines for a half an hour while his opponent hits
through. Darryl Zanuck, one of old Hollywood's croquet
fanatics, who included Harpo Marx, Samuel Goldwyn and Louis
Jourdan, described the predicament: "When you're three-ball
dead, you're just a useless bum."

    Croquet originated in France during the late 1400s, migrated
to England and Ireland in the 19th century and arrived in the
U.S. in the 1860s. The game's popularity has waxed and waned
over the years, but it is once again finding a serious
audience. The U.S. Croquet Association, in Palm Beach Gardens,
Fla., boasts that sales of high-quality mallets and sets have
doubled in the past three years, while the number of croquet
clubs has grown from five in 1977 to over 300 this year. More
people are buying backyard sets, and public courts are springing
up in Tulsa, Phoenix and Rockford, Ill. The final round of the
New York Championship Croquet Tournament was played on June 17
at public courts in Manhattan's Central Park before a hushed
crowd.

    Croquet makes golf, a game to which it is often compared,
seem like a no-brain activity pursued on AstroTurf. It is hard
to see how the game could miss. In what other sport can you sip
champagne and nibble strawberries on a velvety green lawn in
pristine outfits that will never suffer from sweat stains?
Since mental acuity rather than muscles, speed or stamina is
what matters, it is a truly coed sport where women can play men
without a handicap. It is also perfect for those who are no
longer thirtysomething or in perfect shape. American Croquet
Association president Stan Patmor, his tailor-made plus fours
obscuring a few extra pounds, has seen the Sonoma-Cutrer
championships grow dramatically since he became tournament
director in 1986. "The game works for everyone -- old, young,
fit, not so fit. It's beautiful to watch, and it's beautiful
to play."

    Although at its most watchable the game is played in a
Gatsbyesque setting in the wealthy enclaves of Palm Beach,
Newport and the Hamptons, some blue collar is beginning to poke
through the white. Many of the sport's ranked players trained
on public courts; most of them work for a living and pay their
own way to competitions around the world. At the vineyards'
tournament, Dublin's Williams, a musician and graphics
designer, was defeated by Debbie Cornelius, a secretary from
England who had played a dairy farmer and an engineer. Players
in Central Park included a bar owner, a steam fitter, a
hairdresser, the maitre d' at New York City's Rainbow Room and
Wall Street types.

    Still, with upkeep of a 105-ft. by 84-ft. lawn running about
$4,000  a year and a set of croquet equipment costing as much
as $3,500, the sport's appeal to the masses is limited. The
court at Sonoma-Cutrer, built on 16 in. of sand from Bodega
Bay, is mowed three times a day during the tournament to
exactly three-sixteenths of an inch by lawn-mower blades with
the precision of Ginsu knives and then groomed with a metal
comb by a greenkeeper. The dependable sogginess that keeps
British courts so lush is helped along here by a
state-of-the-art sprinkler and drainage system percolating at
32 in. an hour. The boundaries and hoops are rotated so that
no spot of grass gets worn down, creating undesirable breaks.

    And you have to be rich enough not to let something like the
fear of fungus keep you awake at night. "Your court can
disappear on you if you're not careful," says Tom Lufkin, a
member of the game's hall of fame who has built his own court
at his nursery in Northern California. Lufkin, who played for
years on Samuel Goldwyn's two courts in Beverly Hills, recalls
those glory years of the game when fierce rivalries between
literary lions like Alexander Woollcott and George S. Kaufman
led to marathon grudge matches on the producer's courts.
Woollcott once said, "My doctor forbids me to play unless I
win." He played such a vicious game that his friends made a
film in which he was burned at the stake for kicking his
croquet partner. When Goldwyn died, his wife, who had built the
courts as a present to her husband after he could no longer
play golf, turned off the water supply. Two days later, says
Lufkin, the court was gone and a way of life ended. But that
was then.