CAN AMERICANS SURVIVE CROQUET MARATHONS?
Strategy and tactics aside, there is one haunting doubt: Even if the number of tournaments gathering together top players were sufficient to fuel the necessary advancement of skills, where will those players find anything resembling the sheer intensity of the experience of playing in a 21-day event, up to three games each day, often lasting 10 hours or more? The longest known tournament in the U.S. has been 10 days, with nothing like the sustained play of the individual competitor necessary in the MacRobertson Shield. How does one cope with so much croquet packed into so many continuous days of top-level, pressure-packed competition? How could one prepare for such a thing in the more laid-pack pace of U.S croquet? The exceptionally fine performance of the U.S. team in the first week, against New Zealand, might be explained within the context of the entire 21-day ordeal: How could anyone endure so much croquet at one go? The next American MacRobertson team should try to answer that ques
