Another summer is reaching it's final weeks, but I was able to put in a lot of work on the croquet fields. My little social backyard club here in Kansas City successfully implemented some golf croquet events that seemed to breathe new life into the summer tour. I've gotten a chance to play more six-wicket at the Kactus Creek Croquet Club up in Parkville, Missouri. I know now that's where I want to be -- the six wicket game.

Still, Kansas City is nine-wicket country and the September 25-27 USCA Nine-Wicket National Championship is now in the wheelhouse. I was eavesdropping on a discussion about consistency of rules between the nine-wicket game and six-wicket. I suppose that's all up for debate depending what the goal of nine-wicket game should be. I'd like to see more uniformity, but that is a post for another time.

It reminded me though that during the annual cutthroat nine-wicket that my backyard club holds, a veteran of that scene wanted to debate the out of bounds rule. In nine-wicket my interpretation has been that if the ball touches the line, it is out of bounds. We've always played it that way and I was surprised that this player wasn't aware of this. It of course differs from the six-wicket halfway rule, but I think makes sense for deeper grass of the nine-wicket game which often utilizes painted boundaries. Finding the true center of a painted line will always bring up debates.

This player argued though that it should be all the way out to match the all the way through the wicket rule. He lost the debate of course; however, I'd never really thought of it that way and frankly, I have to agree with his point. For simplicity, it seems that the OOB for nine-wicket and six-wicket should match the through the wicket rule. I suppose though that the nearly two inches of extra field could have profound effect on the six-wicket. Still, as I hop back and forth between the different games, I sure would love some consistency.

Dylan-Publisher / Croquet Network