We had come to our local park for a hands-on class in the burgeoning sport of golf croquet, a faster, T20 cricket-style take on the traditional Association Croquet game.
The key difference is that golf croquet has one stroke per turn and, when a hoop is scored, all players move onto the next.
We arrived to find Mark Lloyd of the Chester Croquet Club [logo above] marking the flat, grass court with six cast-iron hoops and a central peg set firmly into the ground.
Mark, a regular club player with over thirty years of experience and a former world ranking of 230, had played some hard-fought matches in his time.
But was he ready for two truculent teenagers and their non-sporting father, the latter perennially the last person to be picked for any school sports team?
Handing out four coloured balls and mallets, Mark appeared to be taking it in his stride.
‘For me,’ he explained as we hit a few warmup shots and tried running a few hoops, ‘croquet is all about strategy.”
I’m always thinking three balls ahead. That’s why it’s a mix of snooker, boules, and chess.’
Read the full story via the Care for the Family Parenting blog, One dad, two teenagers and a new sport.
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