"No Absence of Mallets"

By Jerry Zezima

When it comes to croquet, a leisurely game that sounds like it involves chickens, I cannot mend my wicket ways.

That’s because I am not very good at it.

Proof came when my wife, Sue, who makes delicious chicken croquettes and recently bought a croquet set, soundly defeated me in a backyard blitz.

Our 7-year-old granddaughter also put me to shame before she got bored with the inferior competition and went off to blow bubbles.

Sue, a fan of the TV series “Bridgerton,” in which rich, snooty characters in 19th-century England play a croquet-like game called pall-mall, implied that I could never be on the show because my character, Viscount Jerry I, would ruin the contest and give the swells a bad name.

This would happen as I was clad in a pair of breeches, knickers, pantaloons or whatever ridiculous trousers that guys wore in those days. I would bend over to hit a ball through a hoop and promptly get a wedgie, sending the shot off the powdered wig of a duchess and starting the War of 1812, which didn’t end until 1815, when the Americans defeated the British on the croquet fields of Long Island, where I live and, as it turns out, play the game terribly.

It’s no different from other outdoor games in which I have competed, such as:

Golf, which I played once and ran up a score that rivaled the national debt.

Miniature golf, which I have played many times and have always lost to miniature people (my grandchildren).

Badminton, which I have played a few times and watched more birdies than I hit.

Bocce, which I botched.

And tennis, which I played when I started to court (literally) Sue. She routinely beat me, even though I took lessons as a kid. It quickly became clear that the only way I could qualify for Wimbledon was if I went as a ball boy and got beaned by a blazing backhand. It would have served (again, literally) me right.

Now my incompetence has spread to croquet.

The set that Sue bought came in a rectangular box that contained four mallet heads, four mallet handles, four colored balls, two stakes and nine wickets. There also were instructions that included croquet terms, court layout and rules of the game.

The croquet terms were easy to understand. (My own terms, which I added during the game, were also easy to understand but can’t be repeated here.)

The court layout gave me two choices: 10-by-18 feet and 40-by-72 feet. I chose the former because otherwise our backyard would have to be big enough to increase our property taxes. And I didn’t want the game to last for a month.

The rules were simple: Use the mallet to knock the ball through the wickets without breaking a window or adding new terms. (See above.)

After I planted the two stakes and the nine wickets, I screwed the mallet heads onto the corresponding handles and explained everything to Sue.

I didn’t account for the fact that our lawn has a few divots and bare patches, but it didn’t matter because Sue picked up the game like a pro, knocking her first shot through not one but two wickets.

My first shot traveled about an inch and a half. My second shot glanced off the first wicket and rolled hopelessly away. I had to hit the ball back toward the first wicket and then knock it through.

By this time, Sue was well ahead of me.

I started to get the hang of the game, but by that time it was too late. Sue had already finished before I was even halfway through.

The next day, I got a similar thumping from our granddaughter, who said, “You’re pretty bad, Poppie.”

She doesn’t watch “Bridgerton,” so I couldn’t even blame it on a wedgie in my Bermuda shorts.

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima