SUNNY DAYS, THE PUB… AND CROQUET MALLETS
By Chris Alvey, dbmallets@gmail.com, Sponsors of the Townsend Club Award
I spent the weekend catching up with two friends from college. One is now an SQL developer (don't ask—I still couldn't tell you exactly what that means), the other is a tradesman, and I work in referral management while occasionally driving HGVs at weekends. None of us ended up in careers remotely connected to the Music Instrument Technology qualification we all studied together. In my defence, I did spend a previous life as a sound engineer and lectured in Radio and Television. So I got slightly closer than the others. As often happens when three middle-aged blokes find themselves in a pub garden on a sunny afternoon, the conversation wandered. It started with golf, somehow detoured into croquet, and before long I was demonstrating how to hold a croquet mallet. Quite what everyone else in the beer garden thought of our impromptu coaching session is anyone's guess. Eventually the questions turned to mallets themselves: what they're made from (that's staying a secret), why some cost considerably more than others, and how on earth you choose one. Both of my friends know plenty of golfers who've spent eye- watering amounts on the latest clubs, only to discover that their handicap remained stubbornly unimpressed. Modern sports equipment is full of clever engineering, advanced materials and impressive marketing, and it's easy to convince ourselves that expensive must automatically mean better. After all, if the professionals use it, surely that's the secret? People often put sporting success down to luck—football fans seem particularly fond of saying, "They were lucky." But as the old saying goes, "The more I practise, the luckier I get." Whoever first said it deserves a lot of credit, although several people seem keen to claim it. Good equipment absolutely helps. But the best piece of equipment isn't necessarily the most expensive one; it's the one that suits you. Your grip, your technique, your style of play and, for most of us, our budget. I couldn't tell you what the machine that manufactures our mallet heads costs but given that it produces precision components for multiple industries, I'm fairly confident it wasn't picked up in a Black Friday sale.
Over the years I've been beaten by players using borrowed club mallets. I've watched one of my own teammates, having forgotten his own mallet, borrow two different club mallets over the course of two matches, win one, lose one and play brilliantly in both. The materials, machining and price simply weren't the deciding factors. Experience, confidence and skill were. That's not to say a different mallet can't improve your game. In many cases, it absolutely can. Finding a mallet that feels right can make a genuine difference. But once you've found one that suits you, the biggest improvements won't come from your wallet—they'll come from your willingness to practise. Ultimately, it's not just about knowing what your mallet can do. It's about knowing what you can do with it. It also dawned on me that I may have become that bloke in the pub—the one who has surprisingly strong opinions on an incredibly niche subject. In my case, that subject appears to be croquet mallets. There are worse things to be known for. Thanks to Dec and Jeff for inspiring this article. And if Jeff does rock up to his local croquet club for an introductory session… well, I know a bloke who can sell him a mallet!
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