Wicket Competition : Try as They Might, Americans Not Likely to Beat British at Croquet

The United States may be a big and mighty country with stupendous athletes to rival those the world over--but as some British sportsmen visiting here are wont to point out, America is no croquet juggernaut.

White-clad croquet aces from the United States and Great Britain are doing battle all week at Sherwood Country Club in quest of the Solomon Trophy, regarded as a “test match” between the two nations.

And the underdog American team is hoping to do something it has never done before: beat the Brits at their own game.

“I’d like to beat them by the end of the century, at least,” said Michael Mehas of Hollywood, known as the “bad boy of American croquet” due to his flamboyant antics, which in this sport consist of such transgressions as, gasp, wearing black shoes on the croquet lawn. “If we don’t do it this week, that is.”

There’s little chance of that, said Chris Clarke, a member of the British national team and the reigning world champion of the amateur sport. He calculates the odds of an American victory at 16 to 1, and that’s being modest, he added.

“They’ve got their strongest team ever,” Clarke said. “The difference in strength between the Americans in 1996 and 1997 is significant. But not that significant.”

International tournament-style lawn croquet, much more cerebral and structured than the “backyard game” Americans are used to playing, only began gaining popularity in this country over the past two decades, according to the U.S. players. And it’s still more than a bit obscure, though California’s competitive croquet lawns are among the sleekest in the world.

“These British players have been competing for years,” said Wayne Rodoni of San Mateo, a two-time U.S. champion. “We weren’t playing in grade school. We were playing kickball.”

Under tournament rules, players who hit another ball with their ball get another turn--so the goal, similar to pool, is to ram your ball through all six wickets before your opponent even gets a shot. The Solomon Trophy competition, named after a famous British player from the 1940s, is a best-of-21 contest in singles and doubles.

“The hallmark of the backyard game is putting your foot on the ball and smashing the opponent’s ball into the weeds,” said Rhys Thomas, the director of croquet at Sherwood Country Club. “In the six-wicket game, we’re much crueler, really. We don’t want the opponent to ever touch his ball.”

The game is traditionally marked by gentility and good manners: Scoring is done on an honor system, with no referees or judges. But good old American trash talk has infiltrated even this sanctum of pleasant behavior.

Mehas, a 56-year-old former minor league ballplayer in the Philadelphia Phillies’ farm system, has been playing competitive croquet since 1988, when he spotted a pair of odd-looking wooden mallets in a window display in Palm Springs and decided to give the game a shot.

He has since become one of the top players on the American circuit, though his checkered reputation kept him out of some tournaments and even led to a one-year suspension from the sport when he wore black shoes at a Palm Beach tournament.

“It’s all hearsay,” the pony-tailed Mehas said of his bad-boy legend. “On the Internet, they say I’ve done all these things. I’ve allegedly gotten into all these brawls and altercations.

“They compare me to [Dennis] Rodman, but I haven’t kicked anyone in the [groin],” he added. “The problem is that I try to bring some flair to the sport. I try to play this game like I was breaking up a double play at second base, and some people don’t like that.”

They might be more buttoned down in their appearance, Thomas said, but the British are just as fiery and easily talk as much trash as their competitors. And they too have their eccentricities.

British national player Ian Burridge, for example, is famous in croquet circles for nervously hiking up his socks and fidgeting with his shorts when games get tight.

Defying the popular image of croquet as a game of the idle rich, the six-member American and British teams are almost exclusively made up of middle-class working men who practice their passion on weekends and holidays.

The big difference between the nations is that most American players learned the game in their 30s and 40s, while the British were picking up their mallets in their early teens.

“It’s all about having that edge, really,” said Robert Fulford, Clarke’s doubles partner and a three-time world champion who is currently ranked No. 1 in the world. “If you practice enough, you have that edge.

“OK, it’s not physically taxing at all,” added the 26-year-old math student, a former snooker player who learned he had a gift for croquet at age 15. “But you have to concentrate. On paper, the worst members of the British team are better than the best members of the American team. It’s like being a golf pro. If you are not careful, the Americans are skilled enough to beat you.”

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FYI

The Solomon Trophy competition between the United States and Great Britain croquet teams is taking place this week at the Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks. The best-of-21 challenge, which is open to the public, will run through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the country club, 320 W. Stafford Road. For more information, call the club’s tennis and croquet office at (805) 496-3036.