Putaruru Croquet Club is growing
It’s not the way grandma used to play but it appears golf croquet has become a popular game in Putaruru.
Putaruru social croquet club captain Ron Roberts said members have continued to trickle into the club since its establishment about seven years ago.
‘‘The old type of croquet as grandma used to to play, that’s what I like to it call it, is dying.’’
While some affiliated clubs are losing members, the Putaruru club is going strong, he said.
Older style croquet is played with one person on the field at a time, whereas golf croquet is played in teams and is more ‘‘social’’.
Mainly attracting the older generation, it’s makes for ‘‘easy exercise’’, he said.
‘‘There’s skills that come into it but [it’s easy] as long as you can swing a mallet.’’
It started with Roberts and about seven other members who coincidentally moved to the South Waikato town at the same time from Matamata. As they were all croquet players, they decided to pick up where they left off.
The club now has 28 members who shuffle around the Putaruru Bowling Club green nearly every Monday and Thursday.
And there are so many of them that they have recently taken over another one of the greens which is hardly used by the bowling club, he said.
The group is currently only playing at a social level, but Roberts hoped it could link onto an affiliated club.
‘‘At the moment, we are just a group of people playing croquet,’’ he said.