Paul Bennett decided to stay over an extra day to offer the club members a chance at identifying their stronger and weaker skills through a competitive Gymkhana Croquet Skills test.

The Gymkhana was setup by Paul and his brother Gary for Sunday morning 10 AM start. With COVID, some would-be participants decided to stay at home, but thanked us for setting up the event. 6 of the 7 participants had played in the US Open tournament and were well-familiar with the lawn speed and croquet strokes necessary during the event.

During the first round, Paul explained each skill and how important it is. No trick shots were used in the competition, but it was difficult to get the maximum amount of points. Each skill is basic to playing croquet: hitting in, roqueting a ball to a target, stop shots, split shots, hoop approaches and hoop running.

Entry fees of $10 were collected and placed into a pool divided to 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishers (50,30, and 20%). After all tests had been completed, Brian Lozano had 160 points, Gary Bennett had 110 points and Donna Dixon and Bill Sullivan each had 100 points.

Players could enter a 2nd time for $10, time permitting, and four players decided to go a 2nd round. At the end, Donna Dixon and Blake Fields both improved their scores to rest 1st and 2nd away from Brian, Donna with 170 points and Blake with 165 points. Thus $110 was split up 55 to Donna, 33 to Blake and 23 to Brian.

The competition took a little over 2 hours and everyone seemed pleased to have done the course. Now they can go back and work on some of skills that need a bit of more polish. I am not saying that anyone could have made the maximum score of 610 points, but during the 2nd round, Blake hit every one of the balls at various distances in Skill #1 quickly earning him 75 points.

A Gymkhana can be designed for Golf croquet as well as Association croquet. An intermediate challenge would include some additional tests like running a hoop to the boundary, setting up cannons, peeling balls, etc ...

Please let me know if your club uses Gymkhana competitions to help your club members have fun and enjoy better croquet.

It is clear looking at the data analysis, three folks stand out in terms of skills that got them into the money.
Donna out-shined everyone in the split shot portion of the contest.
Blake out-shined in hitting in.
Brian out-shined in stop shot contest.

Great job everyone and thank you for coming out to the Gymkhana!