The sport of croquet is wonderfully accommodating in that it has variations intended to span casual social play all the way up to an ultra-elite level of play. There are variations that work on normal household lawns (mowed short) and then versions intended for true croquet courts that utilize grass similar to golf greens, but ideally able to achieve faster lawn speeds (and flatness).
Primarily, there are five versions of croquet played across the world. They all share common traits of utilizing mallets, balls and wickets (hoops) on a grass surface. From there, the sport is often broken down by the two main types of courts -- nine wicket and six wicket. This excludes the Gateball court, but we’ll get to that later. My preference is to dissect the sport along the lines of bonus shot croquet and single-shot croquet.*
BONUS SHOT CROQUET: YOU’VE PLAYED THIS GAME
Bonus shot croquet includes Nine-Wicket Croquet (9W), Association Laws Croquet (AC), USCA or American Rules Six Wicket Croquet (US), Ricochet and technically Gateball (GB). In North America, most people at one time or another have played the introductory version of 9W which is often referred to as backyard croquet, cutthroat croquet, family croquet, one-ball croquet or six-ball croquet (6B). For the rest of the world, it’s quite possible to have been exposed to “Garden Croquet,” which is an intro variant to Association Laws Croquet.
BONUS SHOT CROQUET
Backyard Croquet
(aka Nine Wicket Croquet)American Six Wicket
Ricochet
Gateball
Bonus shot croquet is an incredibly simple game that shares two primary characteristics:
The goal is to be the first player to run your ball (or balls) through the wickets (hoops) in the proper order, then hit the final stake to win. Bonus shot croquet is a race to the stake.
The second characteristic is that a player can earn bonus shots by running through a wicket (in the proper direction and order) and more importantly, two bonus shots can be earned by hitting (roqueting) another ball in the game. It is through bonus shots that players can go on a break or a run of multiple wickets.
SINGLE SHOT CROQUET
Golf Croquet
And that’s it … standard croquet as most people know it. From there, it is a matter of learning the wicket pattern, the order of play and assignment of the balls to the players, the boundary rules and some limitations about when you can or can’t hit another ball to gain bonus shots (hint: the short answer is once per wicket**).
So, all the way from backyard six-ball up to the elite Association Laws game, the sport of croquet is very much the same … run the wickets, hit balls and keep your break going to stake out and win. Now, once you get into the details of the simple things like wicket scoring, boundaries, legal strokes and out-of-sequence plays, you’ll need to refer to the thick, convoluted rule books for each of the versions. Compounding that complexity is the number of variants and the lack of consistency in basic principles among those variants. Understandably, this is confusing to any new player and perpetuates the unfair stereotype that the rules of croquet are complicated. To be fair, take a hard look at the rules of when a runner is down in football or what constitutes a legal reception.
SINGLE-SHOT CROQUET: YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED THIS GAME
There is only one version of croquet in the single-shot category: Golf Croquet (GC). You can learn golf croquet in 30 seconds, if you don’t ask questions. Otherwise, it should be about two minutes.
Golf croquet is the fastest growing version of the sport and is played on a six-wicket court and utilizes four balls -- blue, red, black and yellow. In singles GC, player A plays the blue and black balls and player B, plays the red and yellow balls. Blue goes first and the idea is to be the first player to score wicket #1. There are no bonus shots in GC. I will repeat, there are no bonus shots in GC. Red is the second ball played, followed by Black, then yellow, then start over with Blue. The order remains the same (strict) and a player never shoots two shots in a row with the same ball (there are no bonus shots in GC).
Play starts within a one-yard (three feet) arc of corner 4. Again, the order is “strict” and proceeds as Blue, Red, Black, then Yellow. Wicket #1 must be scored from the south side. The first player to do this earns one point. If red were to go through wicket #1 first, the red-yellow player leads 1-0. Now, all balls must play for wicket two. Wicket #1 is done for now.
Red does not get to shoot again after scoring wicket #1 (there are no bonus shots in GC).
Black shoots now and plays for wicket #2. One shot only.
The first side to score wicket two gets the point for that wicket and play proceeds to wicket #3. The first player to seven points wins the game.
GOLF CROQUET FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Do I get another shot if I score a wicket?
No, there are no bonus shots in GC.
Do I get another shot if I hit another ball?
No, there are no bonus shots in GC.
Can I hit the other player’s ball out of wicket scoring position?
Yes, that is a big part of the game. You can also try to block.
Can I jump another player’s ball to score a wicket?
Yes
If my opponent is set up for an easy to shot make wicket #1, can I set up for wicket #2?
Not without a penalty. There is an offsides rule in GC that prohibits you from going more than halfway toward the next wicket. If a ball is “offsides” when the wicket is scored, the opponent may choose to put the offending ball in one of two penalty spots. See the full rule here with penalty locations.
Do you have to play to seven?
It’s common to play to five, seven and 11.
GATEBALL
Gateball was invented in Japan in 1947 and is popular in both Japan and China. It is played by two teams of five players within a 30-minute timeframe. In recent years, there has been more interest (particularly in Australia), but the version has not been played extensively in what are considered the “Big Four” croquet nations -- Australia, England, New Zealand and the United States. The rules are more varied than the traditional bonus shot versions of the sport, but it still carries the principles of earning extra shots when you run a wicket or “touch” another ball. And the goal of a turn is to run the wickets and hit the “Goal Pole.”
WHAT IS EXTREME CROQUET?
Extreme croquet is pretty much golf with croquet equipment and the bonus shots. Or you could say it’s like a combination of golf, miniature golf and croquet. Extreme croquet generally consists of a wicket pattern randomly set across large expanses of “challenging” terrain. Some clubs like to make specific challenges and/or themes around each wicket.
SO WHERE DO I START?
For beginners, the best version depends on your setting. If you happen to be on a six-wicket court, golf croquet is a great way to start. For household lawns, nine wicket is a good intro to the game. And in that case, the six-ball intro version teaches all of the principles needed for all of the bonus shot variants. Once you get the rules down and the basic shots, move ahead to the official nine wicket game to get the full-on croquet experience.
FOOTNOTES
* It’s a point of contention in some circles to refer to single-shot croquet as “croquet,” due to the fact that the croquet shot is not used in single-shot croquet.
** Once a striker hits another ball during a turn, he/she may not hit that same ball during the same turn until running the next wicket. This is referred to as being dead on another ball. Running the next wicket, cleans you of that deadness. For the standard elite form of croquet across the world called Association Laws croquet, that deadness ends at the end of the turn, so you start each turn as a player clean on all balls. In US Rules six wicket, the deadness continues on to additional turns until the striker is able to run that next wicket. The rules around deadness in US Rules croquet get exponentially more complex.