Morning Coffee: Nine-Wicket Dates, Desert Classic and Egyptian Balls

Click to visit CNet StoreWelcome to 2011 folks! Here's to a year filled with croquet. Catching up on recent news ...

Midwest Regional VP Matt Griffith has confirmed that the Missouri Croquet Association will again host the USCA Nine-Wicket National tournament in Kansas City. Dates have been set for September 16-18.

The Mission Hills Club has a flyer out with details on the upcoming Desert Classic Association event to be held January 25-29 in Rancho Mirage, California. Mission Hills has a busy schedule and you check out more events on their club website -- http://www.missionhillscroquet.com/

In case you missed it yesterday, the USCA has announced the 2011 Solomon Trophy team.

Bob Alman has posted a feature article on the upcoming International Polo Club Palm Beach Invitational detailing the choice to utilize Egyptian GC balls for the event. In addition, Bob has posted profiles for all of the players that will participate in the tournament, which has an $8,000 purse.

Leo Nikora posted a fascinating set of photos of John Solomon completing a single peel during the 1969 MacRobertson Shield on the Maui Club site.

And for the last item of the day, this blog link popped up in my news feed and claims to offer a comprehensive list of movies that feature croquet. Certainly, such an article is a good idea, but I'm pretty sure there are some missing from the list. One afternoon, I caught what seemed to be some 1970's romance movie that featured a brief bit of a croquet match in the background. However, I can't remember the title (help me out by commenting if you know). Fortunately, there is a better list of croquet movies provided in this 2005 article on Croquet World Online (reprinted from the English Croquet Gazette).