The High Bisque Tournament on 12/13 August 2010 run by the Croquet Academy was won by Dr Daniel Morgenstern who was successful in all his games. In the final, he beat Steve Lewendon and even managed a very efficient rover peel, finishing with some bisques still standing - a very polished performance that earned him the High Bisque Salver and a handicap reduction from 18 to 14.

In the subsidiary event, a supervised, less experienced group, the winner was Rosemary Coleman who won all her matches. This new venture, where the group played 14pt games under the eagle eye of an experienced coach, worked well and was appreciated by all participants.

The Academy would like to thank all those who entered and played in good spirit and it was interesting to see how all improved over the two days. Special thanks also to the coaches who did such a marvellous job - Alan Theobald, Gene Mears, Daphne Gaitley and Jonathan Isaacs. Their advice and expertise was greatly valued.  Thanks also to Don Mears for all his refereeing, and of course, to the Club for the excellent meals and friendly atmosphere.

See you again next year?

Unfortunately there have been too many cancellations for the Triple Course scheduled for 5-7 August. As such we have reluctantly had to take the decision to cancel it and reschedule it for next spring.

The general feedback we have received it that it would be best to run it in the early part of the season and as such we are looking for a suitable date in April/May 2011 when a number of people have expressed an interest.

Congratulations to Sam Murray who achieved his Silver Merit award in a tournament, straight after participating in the Bronze Course at Southwick this last week.

That's what I call progress!

Please note that the Course Administrator will be away from 19th March so will not be able to deal with any queries concerning the Golf Croquet Referees Course on the 27th after that date.

Any applications or queries after the 19th should be addressed by email to golfrefs@thecroquetacademy.com and will be dealt with directly by the course tutor.

Cliff Jones has agreed to run a Coaches Training Course at Southwick on 20th - 21st April 2010.

Cliff is one of the CA's premier coaches and his course is sure to be a first-rate introduction to coaching croquet.

Those wishing to attend should have a handicap of at least 14 and have a good working knowledge of the laws of association croquet.

See here for further details.

There's been a small error in the display of entry status for course entries. This has been corrected and the page now displays the correctly recorded entry status for all participants.

The CA Training Committee has made a small increase to the fees for courses at the Academy charged to non-associates.

If you are an individual member of the CA (an associate) then there is no change to the fees charged.

You can now keep update with news on the Academy website using RSS technology.

Subscribe to the RSS feed by following the instructions in your browser.

Briefly:

1. Firefox - Put www.thecroquetacademy.com in the address bar and click on the RSS icon at the end of the address.  Subscribe to the livelink.
2. Internet Explorer: Put www.thecroquetacademy.com in the address bar and click on the RSS icon in the toolbar.  Subscribe to the feed.

This will keep you informed of any course updates.

The programme of training for 2010 has been finalised and will appear on this website over the next few days.The Academy is open for bookings straight away.

The weekend of 22/23 August saw a group of four players from the Catenay Croquet Club in Normandy, France attend a specially arranged coaching weekend at Southwick.

Catenay is one of only two clubs in northern France. Their club has two lawns on a multi-sport facility and they have strong connections with Sussex as they play an annual match against Waldron Croquet Club at alternating venues.

They were all pretty good strong hits - due I suspect to the rather long grass they have on their lawns - and it took them a while to adjust to the speed at Southwick.  Their play and understanding of the game improved hugely over the weekend.


It was a most enjoyable weekend, if hard work, and they were a lovely group to coach.

As mentioned above, they have a problem cutting their grass short - they don't have a cylinder mower.   If any club is thinking of selling an old but working mower, please contact me, as they are interested in buying one but, being rather few in number, can't afford a new one.

They're also looking for some second-hand mallets to replace the wooden-handled ones they currently use.

Finally, anyone visiting the Rouen area of France wanting a game of croquet will, I am sure, find a very warm welcome from the members.