CROQUET KING : Burchfield, Master of the Mallets, Hails From Kentucky Tobacco Farm

Archie Burchfield suited up in his whites--polo shirt, slacks, socks, shoes--for the visiting cameraman. Then he ruined the effect. He put on his “Kentucky Farmer” cap. It wasn’t white.

Non-uniform cap and all, he went out by the tobacco-drying barn on his 60 acres in this tiny hamlet in the hills of Eastern Kentucky to demonstrate his game.

Archie is the fastest player in championship croquet. He walks up to the ball. Bam! He drives it through wickets from 30, 40 and 50 feet away.

He shows off. He places a ball a couple of feet in front of a wicket and makes one of his famous “jump” shots. He hits his ball over the blocking ball and it sails through the wicket. He repeats the shot several times. This is no fluke.

Burchfield, 49, is a national champion of six-wicket croquet, a game that for more than a century in America has been the sport of millionaires, the passionate pastime of the upper crust and the very rich.

Archie Burchfield is an outsider at an insider’s game.

“I’m a different breed, like a checker player hornin’ in on a chess group,” allowed the husky, handsome, 6-foot 1-inch dirt farmer from Stamping Ground, population 600. For Archie, $15,000 a year from the farm is big income. For some of his fellow croquet players, $15,000 would be a poor week.

Croquet is a big game in Kentucky. “But not six-wicket croquet that the rich folks play,” explains Archie. “We play the traditional nine-wicket game.” Here in the Bluegrass state, croquet is played on clay.

When Archie became a national champion, though, he built the only grass croquet court in the state on his farm. It’s also the only six-wicket court in Kentucky.

It’s lighted and he practices three to four hours a day, mostly at night after farming through the daylight hours.

Nobody has ever played croquet in Kentucky the way Archie Burchfield plays it. He won the state singles championship in 1970, ‘71, ‘72, ‘76, ‘79, ‘80, ’82 and ’85. He and his partners won doubles titles in ‘73, ‘76, ’85 and ’86.

The 1987 Kentucky croquet championship matches will be held Sept. 3-5. Archie will be there as always. But he would also like to be in Northern California that weekend.

For the first time in the history of championship croquet, there will be a money purse, the $15,000 Domaine Mumm Croquet Classic, Sept. 3-6 at Meadowood Resort, St. Helena, Calif., featuring 28 of the top doubles players competing for a first prize of $5,000, second prize of $3,500 with lesser amounts to other teams.

“We were hoping Archie would make it,” said Damon Bidencope, 27, Meadowood’s croquet pro in a phone interview. “Archie is a stellar player, a clever tactician. He has tremendous ball skill, is excellent at reading his opponent and is a real crowd pleaser. But he never misses the Kentucky championships.”

Bidencope and Burchfield are planning to team up for the 1987 U.S. Croquet Assn.’s national doubles at the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., beginning Sept. 21.

“Prize money is what the sport badly needs,” said Archie, back at the tobacco farm where he also runs 30 head of Charolais beef cattle. “Can you imagine tennis or golf played only for trophies, as we do? Hardly anyone knows about the sport of championship six-wicket croquet.”

The nation’s championship caliber croquet players are counting on the Meadowood purse to change everything. “Other money tournaments will follow and when that happens, we will get TV coverage and championship croquet will come onto its own. It will go over big on television. Championship croquet is a super spectator sport,” said the Kentucky croquet king.

If money is a big problem in croquet, it is a much bigger one with Archie. He would like to enter more of the major tournaments “but it costs too much to get to ‘em, plus entry fees, motels and all the rest. And I always bring Betty (his wife) along,” he said.

One room in his home is filled with 122 croquet trophies. A couple of months ago, he won the 1987 team championship at Palm Beach, Fla., playing with Rem Kraft, a Phoenix developer. Two weeks ago he won the 1987 Georgia singles championship.

It wasn’t until the early 1980s that Archie learned about “the rich folks back East playing croquet.”

His wife read about the U.S. Croquet Assn.’s national tournament one day. “We didn’t even know they played croquet someplace else other than Kentucky,” Burchfield said.

It wasn’t long after that a friend was driving 22 tons of lettuce to Florida and Archie went along “to see one of those highfalutin’ croquet courts back thar.” After delivering the lettuce, the Kentuckians parked across the truck across the street from a private tennis court.

“They weren’t gonna let us in because we was in Levi’s,” remembered Archie. “Finally we sneaked in through a side gate. The pro came up and wanted to know who we was. I told him I been winnin’ the state singles and doubles back home for years. The pro asked me to show my stuff. I did. He couldn’t believe it.”

Burchfield had never seen championship croquet played on grass before, had never seen six-wicket croquet. “I had no idea there was more than one way to play the game,” he said.

In 1982 Archie and his son, Mark, then 20, entered the USCA national doubles tournament. Mark had played with his dad at home but had never entered tournament play.

“He’s a humdinger as a player but doesn’t like the game,” confided Archie.

Held in New York’s Central Park, the tournament provided one of the biggest upsets in croquet history. In the final, Archie and Mark defeated four-time singles champion Archie Peck of Palm Beach, and Jack Osborn, longtime president of the U.S. Croquet Assn.

They won a huge trophy containing a magnum of champagne. The champagne has never been opened. And, Mark, a factory worker, has never played another tournament game.

“People are so nice to us,” Betty said. “When we go back for Archie to play in the big tournaments, they invite us into their mansions to stay with them. Why, in New York one couple took us out to dinner at a Russian tearoom. It cost them $176 for the four of us. We didn’t even know what we ate. We had been eating sandwiches in our motel room.”

In Kentucky the game is played with 14-inch, short-handled mallets. In six-wicket tournaments 36-inch long-handled mallets are used.

“When I started usin’ 36-inch handles, I about beat myself to death in the chest,” Archie said, laughing. He wears his “Kentucky Farmer” cap whenever and wherever he plays, and also wears his white polo shirt with its tail out. “All the others have theirs tucked in,” he said.

Archie makes his own mallets on a lathe in his tobacco barn. The barn is now filled with tobacco he cut, stripped and hung to dry. In another month or so he will take it to market.

Eventually, he will retire from farming. He doesn’t figure on retiring from croquet. “This is a game where age doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “I figure I can still be winning tournaments in my 70s.

“It has cost me a fortune to play all these years and all I have is trophies to show for my winnin’s. If money tournaments come along, maybe I’ll be able to devote more time to the game and earn rather than spend money on it,” he said.