I regularly do searches on "croquet" and the hashtag "#croquet" on Twitter. It's part of the job responsibility of digging up all I can find on the sport. Generally, the search results can be a little sparse.

The week after Memorial Day, I found more "tweets" than I cared to dig through on people that had played in a backyard game of croquet over the weekend. It's the ultimate un-proveable statistic -- how many people play croquet in a given year? Beyond that, how many people have a regular family or friends game either annually or periodically throughout the summer?

Maybe, somewhere out there, someone has a way to prove participation in the backyard game. I haven't come across it, but if you have, please add your thoughts in comment section. Still, I would have to say that I wouldn't be surprised if 100,000 people played backyard croquet in the United States over Memorial Day weekend. There are estimated to be slightly more than 110,000,000 households in America. How many of those homes have a croquet set in the garage? From personal experience, I'd guess around one in twenty or maybe even as high as one in 10.

Checking in with Google* shows that on average 75,000 people search monthly for the keywords "croquet set" in some form or other in the United States alone (globally the average is over 115,000). Searching for "croquet set" on the internet indicates a strong intent to purchase in my opinion, but while not all of those searches are going to translate to a purchase, the amount of people that stop by a Wal-Mart, Target or Dick's Sporting Goods and pick up a set for backyard play is a relative unknown (at least to me).

One statistical comparison that tells the story that members of any croquet association already know is the search for "6 player croquet set" vs "professional croquet set." The six player set nets 6,600 searches monthly versus 260 for professional sets in the U.S. search.

Regardless, everything points to idea that a significant number of people (especially in the U.S.) are playing croquet in the backyard. From that, we know that at least a general familiarity with the concept of croquet is spread each summer season. The problem is even if that casual game turns into a regular game with family or friends, it's more than likely that the game itself is viewed with little respect. Played with tiny mallets and on grass that would be far too long, how could one discover the beauty of the game and cultivate a passion? Consequently, lets just say that by a ratio of at least 6,600 to 260, the game is thrown into the same category as Hillbilly Golf and Washers or Bean Bag Toss.

The concept of televised croquet is quickly dismissed. Too complex, too long, too boring and no one takes the game seriously. I wonder though -- with that much play going on, people know the sport to a degree even if they have the wrong perception. Sports television force fed U.S. audiences poker and sure enough despite the complexity and relative non-action, it created a huge movement. There is no way in 1998 that you could have ever convinced me that poker would be popular on TV.

How popular was curling during the Olympics? Other than ice hockey, that's all I watched. And I started with the premise that how can this sport be in the Olympics and not croquet? It was oddly engaging and strangely enough, I still really don't understand either the strategy (maybe the better word choice is "tactics") or the scoring. And talk about moving slowly ... wow. The "sport" is really carried by the presentation and the announcers. Perhaps if croquet players start wearing crazy pants we can move this thing forward.

I think croquet players and therefore associations are lulled into the concept that croquet is just a non-starter for television. I am not proposing that anyone run out to Versus and start pitching the idea, but I do think we have to change our mindset. Rather than always answering the television question with "I don't see that working," the answer needs to be, "yes, we need to get there and with growing participation in golf croquet we now have the variation that works with the medium."

And from that GC perspective, I would say that the only missing element from a television perspective would be live atmosphere, meaning right now, we are missing both spectators and spectator-friendly venues that will play well in that environment. In relative terms, those obstacles are not that challenging, but do need to be overcome. Still, I'll repeat ... can we move from an automatic "no way" to "yes, once we achieve these steps."

*Google search stats should be taken with a grain of salt. They provide a nice gauge, but the accuracy is questionable in that a lot of terms seem to round to oddly convenient numbers.