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THE BREAKTHROUGH EVENT
The Beverly Hills International in August was the first major Golf Croquet tournament played in the United States. We asked some of the principals and players to comment on the tournament, the evolving game, and its potential impact on the sport of croquet around the world. Mohammad Kamal was narrowly beaten in the tournament by Khaled Younis, the game's reigning world champion. Jacques Fournier, who won the Golf Croquet purse tournament at Sonoma this year, was stopped short in the elimination round, but learned from his experience. Assistant tournament director Greg Goth is a freelance magazine journalist who sees the sport with new eyes.
- Mohammad Kamal, tournament director
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| Khaled Younis (left) and Mohammad Kamal pause at the fourth corner before beginning the third game of their finals match. |
The new rule on jump shots
This was the first major U.S. golf croquet tournament to be played by the new World Croquet Federation rules. It was also the first chance for the Egyptian players to try out these rules, which were introduced as recently as December of '98.
Most top players spoke passionately against the rule change allowing the jump shot - which is not used in the Egyptian game from which most of the official WCF rules are derived. World champion Khaled Younis declared that allowing jump shots took away two skills - blocking and jawsing (placing the ball in the jaws) in return for introducing one skill, the jump shot itself. Others say that allowing the jump shot affects the tactics negatively in other ways - for example, taking away the tactic of blocking the hoop by shooting through the non-playing side when wired from a ball in front of the hoop.
The experienced players - especially the Egyptians - find it difficult to accept a change in the rules that makes such a big impact. You could see them practicing jump shots over and over before the tournament. I told them that they looked like students cramming the night before the exam. I have no doubt that in the next world championship we will see flawless jump shot attempts by the Egyptians - but for now, some of them are not there yet. (One American player said jokingly that he only likes allowing the jump shot because it seems to irritate the Egyptians.)
The ten point game
A significant innovation was trying the 10-point game for the first time in a major golf croquet tournament - with the winner playing to 10 points instead of the usual 7. The players enjoyed it and gave a thumbs up. This would be a good thing to try in the first round of the world championship instead of the seven point game.
The halfway rule
In my opinion, the new rules for simplifying the halfway points are especially useful. Players commented positives on other minor changes that make the rules simpler and easier to understand. Work still needs to be done, however, on improving the clarity of the language.
Who can threaten Egypt's dominant role?
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| Egyptian golf croquet players are known for hitting fast and hard enough to do damage to people and equipment - as illustrated by this split Barlow. |
Jacques Fournier finished the tournament with a solid performance. After losing his first three games in the block, he won his last two, beating the experienced Egyptian player Moheb Malika 10/8 after coming back from 7/1 deficit (the most impressive turnaround of the tournament). He also defeated Mohammad Wasfy (one of the sharpest Egyptian shooters) 10/3. Jacques put up good fights in his three loses in the block. He was knocked out in his ladder match by Waleed Salah in three games, losing the final game 7/6.
Sherif Abdelwahab was great as usual. In the elimination ladder he defeated Salah Hassan (the 1997 world champion and the current Egyptian national champion) to reach the quarter final. He knocked Mehas out in three games and lost the semifinal to Mohammad Kamal. His experience and understanding of the game make him one of the pillars of golf croquet in America.
Ihab Abdelwahab managed in the block what all the Egyptians failed to do: beat Mik Mehas. His only two losses in the block were by the score of 9/10. But he was knocked out in the first match of ladder play. He continues to grow as a golf croquet player. I always thought that it was unfortunate that he did not play golf croquet in Egypt with his brother Sherif. Ihab's playing experience is based mainly on practice with his brother in their home in Massachusetts. His first golf croquet tournament was the 1997 world championship when he won his block and gave Salah Hassan, the eventual world champion, his only loss of the tournament.
I would not be surprised if the next world championship in Cairo in October 2000, is won by an American player. Americans can compete against the Egyptians because we understand their strategy, and we have more American players with top-level experience - former Egyptians who now live and play the sport in the United States. If exposed to as many top-level events as the Egyptians, Americans can win. I hope that other top American players will be encouraged by Mehas' success and Fournier's prospects and join the golf croquet wave. If another country can seriously threaten Egypt's dominance in golf croquet, that will be good for the sport.
The shot of the tournament - almost
One of the most memorable shots of the tournament was in a game between Sherif Abdelwahab and Khaled Younis. Younis had a ball in the jaws of hoop 1 and Sherif had a ball on the boundary in front of the hoop. Sherif decide to attempt a jump shot. He has been practicing long distance jump shots backwards. He aims and adjusts his mallet and turns his back to the target and plays a hammer shot. He said that he found that this style is better for long distance jump shots. The result of his attempt was a heart break. His ball hit the top of the hoop. The aiming was perfect and had it been an inch lower this ball would have run the hoop. I would have called it the shot of the tournament.
The amateur championship
The amateur flight of the Beverly Hills International was won by Nick Gaza of Sunset Canyon Drive Croquet Club, a private club not far from Roxbury Park. We hope that some of our amateur players will graduate to the championship flight next year. The "first annual" was a good example of how this game can be enjoyed at different levels with similar intensity and competitiveness.
With our limited resources we managed to get good coverage (four minutes) from the Fox network affiliate in Los Angeles and a story in the Beverly Hills Courier. We think we can do better next year. We have already received commitments from the Egyptian Consul general in San Francisco and the Egyptian American Organization to gives us a hand in publicizing the future events. My ultimate goal is to get daily coverage from a sports channel with highlights from ESPN Sports Central.
Sponsorship is a key element
With a generous donation from Beverly Hills Croquet Club member Dr. Stanley Burton followed by another donation from Amir Ramsis Naguib of Egypt, we were able to give a thousand-dollar prize to the first place in the Championship level. The Beverly Hills club will come up with a plan in the near future to get sponsorship from local business in Beverly Hills, and our ultimate goal is to cover some or all of the expenses of our international guests, to make it easier financially for them to cover their travel expenses. Prize money takes the event to a higher level, as incentive for the top players and a bit of glamour that helps generate publicity.
It was a pleasure to be part of this event - a milestone for golf croquet in America. We hope that one of the results of this event is to strengthen our golf croquet representation in the world championship and also to help promote the game of croquet in all its forms.
THE CROSS-OVER FACTOR
- Jacques Fournier
The possibility of golf croquet becoming a major variant of the game or even an independent sport has become much more of a reality since the WCF has begun to take a larger role in promoting the game. With new and improved rules accessible to everyone around the world, there are national and world championships, and croquet players outside of Egypt are beginning to take the game seriously.
As Association croquet players begin to compete in golf croquet, particularly against the hard-hitting Egyptians, they will probably find that their hits are not as effective as they need to be. In Association croquet it is not imperative that players be good at roquets in order to win. As a result, even top players spend much more time perfecting their croquet strokes, break play, and triple peels than working on their mid- to long-range roquets. In addition, when we do practice roquets we are usually just focusing on merely hitting a ball, whereas in golf croquet it is usually in our best interest to blast the other ball to the opposite boundary while maintaining position in front of the hoop. Sure, it is possible for a good Association player to get by in golf croquet competitions without much swing modification, but it is not going to happen without very precise lagging skills.
On the other hand, in order to be a top golf croquet player it is not necessary to swing at 50 mph and make hoops from across the lawn - as many seem to believe. Here are some observations I have made through watching at close range the successes of top Egyptian players as well as their failures.
1. SWING MODIFICATION. In golf croquet, if you hit an opponent's ball and your ball doesn't stop near the hoop, in many cases you might as well have missed. Some swing modification is necessary in order to get your ball to stop in the right place. First of all, try choking down on the mallet. This will probably help you to swing faster, which will obviously make the ball you hit go a lot farther, but in addition a choke hold will cause your ball to skid a longer time before it begins to roll; so when it hits the other ball, your ball does not have so much spin that it continues to move forward.
Second, if you use a pendulum swing, abandon it for golf croquet. It seems to me that a pendulum swing makes it very difficult to swing fast. In addition, on short roquets you will be able to sacrifice some accuracy for a good "stop shot," which makes the ball skid even more. To do this you will need to bring the mallet down on the ball at a sharp angle. A pendulum swing is very good at training you to swing through the ball but does not handle an abrupt jab shot very well.
2. HOOP SHOTS. Do not jab at hoop shots. While you will see many of the top Egyptians do this, you will also see their balls very often end up farther from the hoop than where they started. For this type of shot a good smooth pendulum swing is still the best way to shoot. This way even if your hoop shot is not perfectly accurate, the spin that you put on the ball will still probably be sufficient to put the ball through, or at least jaws it.
3. PLAYING THE PERCENTAGES. If you are lucky you will develop the ability to shoot with a faster swing and hit jab shots that send your opponent to kingdom come while leaving your ball in "gimmie" range. However, even if you do you still should remember to play by your percentages. Remember those touch shots you used to have? Use them. Sometimes it is much easier and more effective to hit a soft shot putting your opponent into a wired position than trying to bury him/her over on the other side of the lawn. If you can develop good judgment of your limitations you will have a huge advantage over many of the top Egyptian shooters who will often just hack at a hoop from 40 feet because it is there.
4. SEQUENCE TACTICS. If your opponent has the first opportunity to take position at the next hoop, that doesn't necessarily mean that you should shoot at his/her ball. Even if you do hit the ball, you will most likely end up farther from the hoop than the other ball does, and is now his/her turn to play again. Most of the time it will be to your advantage to lag up with your first ball and then try to take the opponent ball out of position with your second ball. If you hit, the hoop will probably be yours. Even if you miss, that doesn't necessarily mean that you have lost the point. The opponent may decide that it is too risky to shoot the hoop with your ball in position and will try to take you out of position or block you.
IT AIN'T BEIGE PAINT
- Greg Goth, Assistant Tournament Director
Watching croquet has been likened to watching paint dry. And, to one schooled in the American Rules game, watching golf croquet was like watching beige paint dry.
But the finals of the first Beverly Hills International proved that world-class golf croquet is like world-class anything else, inspiring consternation and amazement in turn. Golf croquet as played by Mohammad Kamal and Khalid Younis in that final was a classic no-holds-barred duel in the sun, with 50-foot roquets and 20-foot hoop shots being made just as casually as most of us accomplish a six-foot take-off in front of a fat hoop.
At its best, this game is something anyone can appreciate. Indeed, it may be the novices, those we need most to attract to our sport, who automatically see the appeal in the hard-shooting "vang, zoom, to the moon" style the world's best treat us to...and maybe they'll want to come out and see if they can't give a ball a hard ride on a fast green without worrying about roquet, croquet, continuation and that constant dreaded talk of being dead all the time.
As for veterans of the other forms of the sport...well, it's not hard to imagine them becoming as proficient in golf as they are in International and American rules, and turning that hitherto imagined beige plain into a glorious Pollock palette of long-range roquets, impossible hoops, and that euphoria we get on the court so often; the euphoria we can't explain except by holding out our mallet and hoping somebody else will grab it, take a swing and understand.
[Layout by Reuben Edwards; photos by Bob Alman.]