CROQUET


SHOE-STRING preparation


DAVID MAGEE, Chairman of the Lawns Committee at Cheltenham Croquet Club, takes us through preparations for the Croquet World Singles Championships


T


he Cheltenham Croquet Club was founded in 1869


and was originally located in Montpellier. No older clubs exist although Brighton and the All England Club at Wimbledon were formed in the same year. Today, the Club is situated in the Old Bath Road adjacent to the East Gloucestershire Tennis Club; until 1908 they were one and the same club. The Cheltenham Croquet Club is regarded by many as the pre- eminent croquet club in the United Kingdom and, with 11 full-size croquet courts within its grounds, is one of the largest centres of croquet in


the world. The Club regularly stages major national events, hosting either the Open Championships or the British Men’s and Women’s Championships each year.


This is the first time that the Club has been selected to stage the World Championship. However, the Club hosted the MacRobertson Shield in 1996, the last occasion that the event was held in this country. The Club is also the home of the Office of the Croquet Association, the national governing body of the sport.


BUT what of the surface on which the


Championship will be played at Cheltenham. The Club’s eleven courts stretch in three banks in an easterly direction away from the club house. The first eight were laid in 1904 and courts 9, 10 and 11 were laid in 1908 when the Club acquired additional land to the south. I continue to be impressed with the skill of the men


who laid the courts 100 years ago as the fall in the land is only some eighteen inches over the 180 yards of the grounds. Each court measures 35 x 28 yards which means that Peter James, our one and only groundsman, has some 11,500 square yards of fine turf to look after! You might think that


preparations for the World Championship would significantly limit the use of the courts but this has not been the case. The Club hosts some twelve tournaments a year which account for approximately 45 days of the playing season. This year the Club is holding 9 tournaments (33 days) before the Championship and the Club’s premier tournament, July week, will only finish three weeks before the start of the Championship. This is on top of a very busy internal programme of competitions necessary to satisfy the Club’s membership.


Courts 9, 10 and 11


were re-laid in 2001 but the other eight courts are much as they were one


Peter James, CCC’s only groundsman has 11,500 square yards of fine turf to look after


The Cheltenham Croquet Club will be staging the World Croquet Singles Championship from 6-14 August 2005. The Championship, sanctioned by the World Croquet Federation, was first held in 1989 and is now an established event in the international croquet calendar. In previous years the Championship has been held in Australia, France, New Zealand and the United States of America as well as in England. This is the first time that the Cheltenham Club has been chosen to host the Event which has been made possible by the generous sponsorship of Mitsubishi Motors.


The Championship will be open to the eighty highest seeded croquet players from around the world. The Club is expecting to welcome competitors from twenty croquet- playing countries including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the United States of America, many European countries as well as the home countries of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.


Cheltenham does not have enough courts to cope with a tournament involving eighty competitors so play will also take place at the neighbouring croquet clubs at Bristol, Edgbaston and Nailsea.


Robert Fulford, from England, is the current world champion. He has won the title on four previous occasions. Chris Clarke, another Englishman and a previous winner of the title, will also be competing as will the other four members of the Great Britain team who won the World Team title, the MacRobertson Shield, in 2003.


The Mitsubishi Motors World Croquet Singles Championship


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