Member Profile: Ryan Thompson

Ryan Thompson

Age: 44

Home base: Buffalo, N.Y.

Home club: Buffalo Croquet Club

Grip: Solomon

Mallet: Custom-made John Hobbs mallet crafted with Bocote wood and a narrower 2-inch-wide mallet head that is 11 inches long and weighs 2 pounds, 7 ounces. Total mallet is 2 pounds, 14.5 ounces and 36 inches long with a carbon fiber shaft.

Years playing croquet: 15

Favorite croquet venue: The NYCC’s Central Park lawns. It doesn’t matter how much dirt or how many acorns there are, playing in the middle of Central Park, in the middle of our nation’s greatest metropolis, is unrivaled.

Favorite tournament: The Buffalo Croquet Club American Six Wicket Invitational, of course. With the help of some dear friends and colleagues, we started this tournament in 2016, and it has been a sellout success ever since. While I won’t be able to continue as the tournament manager any longer, I do hope to remain the tournament director. Hopefully, I will see you all in August 2022.

How did you get into the game: I was out one night in Manhattan with incoming NYCC President Doug Moore, and he said he needed to wake up early in the morning to play croquet. I said, “Who the #$@% plays croquet?” I was unwittingly made a member of NYCC soon thereafter, and it would be two years before I ever even played the game.

Croquet highlights: I had a recent 17-game win streak going in tournament singles games, and I was quite confident that I had secured my 18th game. I hit my balls into the corners for the last turn and went to congratulate my opponent on a valiant effort … only to discover that I had actually lost by one wicket. I think it’s a play like this that has earned me the nickname “Trainwreck.” Helping bring and establish six wicket croquet in Buffalo, particularly American Rules croquet. I feel strongly about our responsibility to our founders, as well as doing what we can to promote the American version of the sport. I consider the Buffalo Croquet Club receiving the USCA’s “New Club of the Year” award in 2017 the best trophy yet. I also just annihilated Rich Curtis, Chris Patmore and Doug Grimsley at the Vuelta a España in our four-person fantasy cycling league.

Do you play other sports? As soon as the Buffalo American Six Wicket tournament is over, I put away my mallet and start training for cyclocross season.

Favorite sports teams? Go Bills! The Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres are obviously very important to me, but I am a huge sports fan in general, and we have two TVs in our living room so that we can always watch sports – whether it be boxing, MLB, cycling, NASCAR, golf, motocross, chess, NBA, surfing, tennis or skateboarding. When the pandemic first hit and no sports were televised, I even got into competitive marble racing. It was actually pretty good, and I wish they would put that back on TV.

What is the best thing the USCA has done for croquet? I love the USCA for what it has done to unify the croquet community (even with multiple versions of the sport) and instill a united governance with a handicap system, tournament calendar, national awards, regional competitions and hall of fame, as well as a central headquarters that we can all play at.

What would you like to see happen in the sport over the next 10 years? Return to the Olympics. I know that’s not realistic in the next decade, but I think that should be the end goal of our and future croquet generations. I think there should be a USCA Olympic Committee that has that sole mission, including identifying the target countries for adoption. Even if consistently unsuccessful, the efforts, press and publicity caused by an unwavering push to return croquet to the Olympics would be beneficial to the marketing of the sport. And, if you need an idea for a symbol or logo for the campaign, just look at the four croquet balls in the Olympic rings.

Photo by Mark Mulville/The Buffalo News

What have you learned from croquet? Don’t ever underestimate what you can do. One time John Young III and I found a wild turkey out back in the trees behind the Central Park lawns – an actual, live wild turkey in the middle of Manhattan. Just imagine what that turkey had to go through to get there!

Croquet tips: (1) Don’t ever cheat. Call faults on yourself. Wins are short-lived, but people will always remember the honorable players and the cheaters for a lifetime. (That’s right, I know who you are!) (2) I speak from years of failure and futility here when I say that if you are going to wait until it’s your turn to take your oneback clearance, you must find a reliable reminder strategy. I have now started to untie my left shoelace. Let’s hope this works. (3) Finally, stop worrying about the little things that your opponents do that may be against the rules, like taking more than 45 seconds or not moving their balls on take-offs. Let it go. The mental effort that you spend worrying about these things will hurt you more than your opponents. Johnny Osborn told me this the morning before my first playoff game (while drinking whiskey in the basement of Keens). It has stuck with me ever since, and more importantly, it has made the game more fun. After all, it’s just croquet.

Ryan Thompson, who began playing croquet with the NYCC when he was a newspaper editor in Brooklyn, routinely uses some of his media insights and connections to promote the Buffalo croquet tournaments, as seen here giving a television interview to Channel 4 News.

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