THE EFFECTS OF SLOPING COURTS CONTINUED
Comprehensive lawn levelling is expensive, poten7ally disrup7ve, and is a long term investment, so it pays to know when it is needed and to get it right when it is. This analysis suggests that absolute perfec7on may not be necessary, but that overall levelness of 2mm per metre or be8er is good enough even for the most demanding requirements. That need not involve expensive equipment: one of the courts in the chart s7ll reflects the results of being levelled by hand thirty years ago with the aid of a tradi7onal surveyor’s level – just as our predecessors would have done the job in Dr. Grundy’s 7me. But with skill and modern laser‐controlled machinery, ge9ng close to perfec7on should not be impossible if the budget will allow it.
MALLET DESIGN & PERFORMANCE by Chris Alvey, dbmallets@gmail.com, Sponsors of the Townsend Club Award
In a previous ar7cle I wrote about players wan7ng a 3lb mallet and that technology had moved on, with performance and distance being achievable with more modern, lighter materials. We figured that we could make a lighter 11” mallet that would perform as well as our best‐selling SP6… I mean how hard could it be?! We inherited our mallet designs from David when we took over the company and they work very well for a huge variety of players. But if we want to keep up with the changing demands, we needed to start looking at something new. So, the MP1 and MP2 were born. Actually, they were scribbled on a scrap of paper, and at that point I started to realise that we didn’t know how to balance the weight to the playing surfaces. What we did know, was that we wanted the head to be wider than it was tall, and that meant we could take more material from the ver7cal plane, genera7ng the weigh7ng in the ends and looking,
well… cool. We used David’s placement of the Aerotech holes from the SP6 to gauge the distance we could make the holes from the faces and the sha'. This was pre8y much “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” in ac7on. We demoed the mallets with two members of Bury Croquet Club and of course David. Anne and I are split on which we like best, but it seems so are other people as we have sold several of each prior to us having them in as stock items. These mallets are light (2lb 9oz light), but the designs that David had done previously helped us create a nicely balanced mallet that strikes the ball well, has the same sha' as the other models and has improved my jump shot. I re‐iterate my point from the earlier ar7cle ‐ why 3lbs? Try something new; mallet manufacturers are doing so and that is so we can help you elevate your game.
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