Want you back for good

[gayparee]

Like many sports, croquet is basically a game of confidence (at least as far as the skill side goes - tactics are another matter). Step onto the court feeling good and you're halfway to victory already. The trouble is that confidence is very hard to engender. As an example, on a handful of occasions in my croquet career I've stepped up to a long

Comments

[sintar_mebta]

I find snooker works similarly - I used to play every other week when I was a teenager. Sometimes I would play well and have confidence to knock in good pots and be in good touch, and other times I couldn't hit the side of a barn. I'd settle down for a shot, safe in the knoweldge that I was going to miss it.

What is a negative handicap? Is that like a golfer starting at 1 over par...? Does that mean you have to start in the car park?

[gayparee]

A negative handicap is the equivalent to a "plus" handicap at golf (so I understand). Croquet handicaps run from 20 to -3. The reason why this range was chosen is apparently so that minus players have a special status. (Such as being able to do triple peels. Look, don't even ask.)

All hail to my special status (ahem).

Nick

[jiggery_pokery]

In any case, I am glad to read that confidence is running alongside you; having just checked the latest Turbo to find out that it did indeed make the "so how did the Inter-Counties go?" comment I was just about to post quite redundant, many congratulations on your personal 9/10 run and a positively Sunderland-like run of form after a shaky start. (Conversely, sounds like the Hertfordshire player you mention might have been struggling with his own confidence.) Are you allowed to employ GAMESMANSHIP in the noble art of croquet and put your opponents ON TILT, as the_maenad might have capitalised it? (Might it be a +EV move to have Whitesnake or the like playing on your iPod loudly enough for your pleasure and just loud enough for your opponent's displeasure?) I imagine that there is a world of difference between pro golfers playing golf and pro poker players playing golf, for just that sort of reason. Any further information you can share about the social side of the Inter-Counties would be of great interest. Will you be pitching for the captaincy

[jiggery_pokery]

I note, for instance, the existence of the Oxford Croquet web site in an article that resolves your TPO question. I was prepared to guess that a TPO was some sort of triple peel, but feared there might be some sort of offside variant thereof which would be deucedly complicated and technical to explain. Either that, or an often-feared Toilet Paper Outage.

[gayparee]

For quite a while, a "county" was pretty much anyone who could get six players and a reasonable case - hence the Channel Islands. But a few years ago, with the event becoming increasingly popular, things were tightened up and counties based on the 1971 counties, for the simple reason that at that time everyone in the country lived in one county or another. These days, with all the unitary authorities and metropolitan areas, that isn't the case. The only exceptions were Avon, who were allowed to continue to compete for as long as they can raise a team (and this is why there isn't a Somerset), and Channel Islands, who were an exception for (I presume) historical reason, and can continue to compete even if they have years out due to not being able to raise a team

[jiggery_pokery]

I am already Middlesex captain! I knew that! Will you necessarily be next year, though? Not to disparage your evidently fine captaincy, of course.

Oh, England's county system. *rolls eyes* How would hypothetical Major League Croquet with franchises based on the nine governmental regions of England work in practice? More seriously, how many of those nine regions would be able to raise a team? *investigates* Crikey, the lot (heck, the CA has ten English regions, not nine) plus Glamorgan could represent Wales and Scotland is perfectly well-represented already. Carry on.

I am delighted to see that Middlesbrough is adequately represented in the croquet department, if not quite a powerhouse; our last house was about five furlongs, I would say, from our local lawn. (But, less plausibly and so more impressively, where I used to live with Dad, in the post-Oxonian GIT days, is within sight of where the local Aussie Rules Football team play.) If you ever come up here then I should take you to see either hallowed turf. You could play a round