Golf Croquet is played with four coloured balls and six hoops. The balls are played in sequence, blue, red, black, yellow.* Blue and black play against red and yellow. Games can be played as singles or doubles.
The hoops are played in a fixed order. Once one side takes a hoop the game moves to the next hoop. The first side to take seven hoops wins.
The game is largely tactical, with each side trying to outmanoeuvre the other in order to take the hoops.
Various tactics are available such as knocking opponents balls out of position and hopefully taking position yourself, or blocking an opponent’s ball, or blocking the hoop, or pushing your partner ball into position.
The skills required are precision shots at distance, good control of the ball in close play (stop shots), jumping over balls (quite advanced).
But thinking ahead to how your opponent might answer your shot is crucial and the key to the game.
*There is an alternative set of colours, green, pink, brown and white, known as secondaries, that allows two games to be played on one lawn.