Background

You may have read about extreme croquet on the internet at sites like extremecroquet.org or extremecroquet.com, but we play our own version of extreme croquet. It has become a holiday tradition for our family, playing as many games as possible over Thanksgiving and Christmas, rain or shine. The competition is fierce, and the battles are heated. Much beer and glühwein has been consumed over the years, and many balls and mallets have met their makers in the process. This page is devoted to our favorite game.

The Course

We play in the front and side yards, making use of neighbors' yards whenever necessary and possible. We play on mostly Bermuda grass, and the course makes good use of existing elevation changes, especially in the second half of the course. The stake, which we use to start and finish our games, is perched on the edge of a fairly steep hill, making that final shot a bit tricky. Bermuda grass also gets trampled and thins out after a day or so of use, so the course gets faster the more you play. There are also sticks, small branches, and clumps of pine needles that you must watch out for.

We also piloted a short course on New Year's Eve, where we played a version of the front nine, only on the house side of the yard. This could lead to a new system of playing shorter games on either side of the yard.

Equipment

We started off with store-bought sets from Sportcraft and the like, but during the course of play, we broke too many mallets and balls. 'Dirty Harry' Hochsteter addressed that problem by customizing the mallets. He started off with long-handled wooden mallets found in the nicer, wood-box sets. Then, he purchased some medium-softness rubber hammer heads, cut off one of the factory mallet heads, and then screwed the rubber hammer head into the wood. The result was a two-sided mallet, one with a wooden side for short to medium range shots and one with a rubber side for long distance drives. Though these two-sided mallets are still available, most of the players have started using specially-designed extreme croquet mallets, with virtually unbreakable plastic heads and long, stout wooden handles. Nasty purchased an all wooden mallet with a square head that he calls "mjolnir", after Thor's hammer. Loosely translated, it means "crusher". We also stopped buying the smooth-faced plastic balls, as they have a thin outer layer that cracked or split in half easily, especially in cold conditions. We now use ridged plastic balls, which seem to be more durable.

Event Results

Official record keeping began Memorial Day, 2005, much to the chagrin of players whose win total is meager, but it was decided over Christmas 2005 to begin keeping track of 1st-3rd place, rather than only 1st place. The Memorial Day 2006 tournament is the first tournament with data for second and third place finishes.

Latest Tournament: Memorial Day, 2008: