May Video: Mohamed Nasr by Bob Kroeger

I find this video to be very interesting for two reasons:

-- The way he opens his feet during the huge back swing
-- Notice during the slo-mo on the first shot that the mallet follows through all twisted, yet the shot is still successful

May Links: Sonoma-Cutrer and Kentucky Nine-Wicket

Sonoma-Cutrer Croquet Club / Club

A beautiful club site designed in WordPress, which allows for an RSS feed that people can subscribe to with their iGoogle, My Yahoo or MSN pages. The feed for Sonoma-Cutrer comes in on the Croquet Network feed below. More croquet sites need to use a blog platform (Squarespace, WordPress, TypePad, Blogger) for their sites. The updating is easy and the RSS feed capability keeps more players and fans in touch with the site.
http://sonomacroquet.org/

Kentucky Croquet Club / Club

A nine-wicket club that plays on clay and claims to be the oldest croquet club in the U.S.

http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Loge/9814/

The National Croquet Center / Venue
This is a high quality site with merchandise available.
http://www.croquetnational.com/

April Tournament Winners

4/25 -- Alumni Cup/Leawood, KS -- Kansas State
4/26 -- International Rules Championship Singles/West Palm Beach, FL-- Brian Cumming
4/26 -- International Rules Championship Doubles/West Palm Beach, FL -- Leo McBride & Doug Grimsley

No word on the results from P. Diddy's tournament.

Sources: USCA, Croquet World, PBR Tour

First Shot: Upside/Downside

Well, I'm finding out how difficult it is to manage a blog site, play some croquet, keep the grass under control and spend some time with the family. The downside is nearly another month without getting a post up, but we forge on.

The upside is I've got a couple of tournaments under my belt.
The downside is they've both been wet and cold and dark.

The upside is I played and hosted my first team event for our local club -- Alumni Cup.
The downside -- we lost to K-State. Oh well, the NC and Orange Bowl will have to satisfy me 'til next year.

The upside is my yard is starting to fill in.
The downside is it seems like I spend more time mowing that playing.

The upside is it looks like I've wrangled an invite to play some six-wicket croquet on a real field.
The downside -- there is none, you can't go wrong with that.

The true upside is that the weather is starting to warm up a bit in Kansas and it's time to "swing the wrenches."

Sincerely,
Dylan, Publisher -- Croquet Network

April Croquet Photo of the Month

recursion_see_recursion / flickr creative commons

2008 WCF Golf Croquet Championship Video

April Video of the Month

Last point of a series of videos from YouTube on the final game between Ahmed Nasr and Chris Clark. Could use some play by play, but otherwise, very good.