Today was the day that the croquet really started to heat up. We had game after game of excitement and tension. Possibly the most exciting game was played at Kelburn between Jim Nicholls and Sam Murray. Time was called with Sam on rover and peg and Jim on rover alone. Sam had a tough 4 yard rush down the East boundary with his ball for rover to Jim’s ball and opted to play his peg ball, roll partner towards rover and peg out to equalise.
Read MoreClark: Playoff Battles on Deck #04
I spent today at Kelburn and I’m pleased to say that the lawns have improved in pace over the past couple of days. There was the odd fast patch in front of some hoops, but the main difficulty was caused by the wind which averaged 30 kmph and had gusts up to 60 kmph.
Read MoreClark: ACWC18 Not Off to Great Start #03
I spent today at Paraparumu – a 4 lawn club with the top two lawns running around 10 seconds and the bottom two around 11 seconds. Regrettably, players partners and other spectators were banned from using the clubhouse. This is not the sort of hospitality that Croquet New Zealand expects from host clubs.
Read MoreClarke: Plenty of Upsets on Day One #02
After visiting all five venues on yesterday's practice day, I spent most of day one at Waikanae with a short visit to Plimmerton in the early afternoon.
Waikanae is the furthest venue at about one hours drive outside Wellington and has a pretty five lawn club. The front four lawns are soft, green and over-watered, running at 10.8 seconds whilst lawn 5 is an excellent lawn with different grass and firmer subsoil, running at 12.2 seconds.
Read MoreMorning Coffee: Chilton, MacRob Exhibition and More
As the new year settles in, I can certainly acknowledge that over the past few weeks Croquet Network has been all like "me, me, me," with posts on the Best of 2016, Top Supporters and our recent announcement of our 2017 Media Kit. We'll chalk that up to a little bit of annual housekeeping and specifically in the case of the media kit -- a strong desire to expand the editorial output of the website. A mission which obviously accelerates as the budget increases.
Looking forward though, we are now ready to get back to on-site tournament coverage and the usual features on the sport of croquet. With that in mind, I always enjoy the annual re-start of the Morning Coffee winter spring series. Like a lot of good cable or Netflix series, this weekly roundup of world croquet news now focuses on a short run from January into the spring. At some point, we all need to get off the keyboard and get onto a court.
Enough with the long intro, we're back in action for 2017 and here's your weekly rundown ...
2017 MALLET POLL: Get ready for Croquet Network's most popular annual series. The 2017 Mallet Poll will launch for public votes, this Friday, January 20, 2017 and run through the end of the month. And yes, once again we'll follow up in February with an updated 2017 Mallet Directory based on the results.
FORDYCE WINS NZ GC TITLE: Sixteen year-old Edmund Fordyce became the youngest player to win the New Zealand golf croquet national open singles title with a 5-7, 5-7, 7-3, 7-5, 7-1 over Josh Freeth in the final. Full story from the Nelson Mail.
BOB CHILTON PHOTOGRAPHY: CWO has a piece on Bob Chilton's incredibly engaging photography that goes well beyond croquet. You might note that the last photo in the article appeared on the cover of the USCA's Croquet News for the 2015 Volume 1 issue. All of the photos in the CWO article are downsized, but you can see Chilton's full collection on his website: www.bobchilton.com. I recommend following his Facebook page as it's always enjoyable to see one of his beautiful nightshots pop in your newsfeed.
MACROB EXHIBITION TEST RECRUITING: The current issue of the USCA's monthly PDF newsletter is calling for six championship flight association croquet players to play a one-day exhibition test match against England’s MacRobertson Shield team. Each player will play two singles games and one doubles game. The exhibition will be played Saturday, April 15, 2017, at the Pasadena Croquet Club, Pasadena, California. Anyone interested should e-mail Eric Sawyer at ecsccs323@gmail.com. He will select the six players with the highest dynamic WCF AC grades.
FEC EUROPEAN GC CHAMPIONSHIP: The UK's Croquet Association fixtures calendar has listed the 2017 European Golf Croquet Championship dates as May 24-28, 2017 to be held at two clubs in Cadiz and Seville, Spain. More infomation on the event from the CA website.
GERMAN GOLF CROQUET OPEN: The Ninth German Open Golf Croquet Tournament will be held at Renzel, close to Hamburg, Germany from Saturday 20th to Sunday 21st May 2017. .
NICHOLLS IN FLORIDA: Australian's Jim Nicholls is in the US for a stint as the croquet pro at the Ponte Vedra Club in Tallahassee, Florida. Check out his Croquet Pro #01 and Croquet Pro #02 blog posts for his take on the visit so far.