Essick Wins GC World Title

PHOTOS BY SARAH PATTON

American Matthew Essick rolled through the 2022 WCF Golf Croquet World Championship with both perseverance and strong form to claim his first world croquet championship with a 7-3, 6-7, 7-3, 7-3 finals victory over England’s Robert Fulford on August 7, 2022, at Sussex County Croquet Club in Brighton, U.K. Paired with Ben Rothman’s win in 2019, Essick’s title delivered a repeat GC World Championship win for the U.S.

The event played out over nine days and Essick marched through the five-round knockout without having to face a deciding game. In fact, he was 7-0 through the quarterfinals and stretched that to an eight-game winning streak before dropping the second game in the semifinals to Australia’s Robert Fletcher, but still prevailed 7-4, 2-7, 7-4, 7-3 and overall was 13-2 in the knockout.

That semifinal was a tremendous display of excellent form from both players, but Essick looked like a man on a mission and he concluded that match with an epic double-hoop score through H9 and H10 from an angled south boundary shot.

The other semifinal featured a legendary matchup of long-time world championship title rivals as Reg Bamford squared off against Robert Fulford. From an AC perspective, they both hold five AC World titles while Bamford had two wins in their headto-head World AC finals matchups in 2001 and 2005. Bamford’s resume also includes GC World Titles in 2013 and 2017.

While the Essick/Fletcher four-game semifinal wrapped up in relatively rapid fashion, Bamford and Fulford went at it for more than nine hours. The match contrasted Bamford’s shot precision with Fulford’s tactical approach that effectively extended each hoop battle. It lived up to the billing as Bamford took Game One 7-5, and Fulford followed with a 7-6 victory to even the score.

Bamford bounced back with another 7-5 win in Game Three and with just one win to advance, the usual script called for Bamford to elevate his game and quickly dominate in Game Four. After all, he had won 15 straight games prior to the Game Two loss and was still +99 on hoops for the entire event.

But, Fulford battled in Game Four and hit and extended battles, and we started to see a few misses by Bamford. Fulford got the 7-6 victory, and we were headed to a fifth game. Here it seemed that Fulford finally wore Bamford down and the misses became more frequent. Just like that, the game was out of hand for Bamford and Fulford prevailed overall 5-7, 7-6, 5-7, 7-6, 7-2.

That set the stage for a similar but even wider contrast of styles in the final as Essick’s quicker pace and spectacular shooting skills would go up against Fulford’s years of experience and masterful tactics.

Not surprisingly, Essick came out with a 7-3 win based on his strong clearing skills. And to the script in Game Two, Fulford found a way to extract more out of each hoop, taking a 7-6 victory in a game that seemed like Essick’s to win. Essick stormed back to win Game Three 7-3, but we started to see more failed clearances and hoop shots by both players. The Sussex County court appeared to be deadly fast and the hoops were absolutely unforgiving. Game Four certainly looked to balance on how the players would be able to handle the court conditions. Essick was able to get the early lead, but despite a fair amount of missed shots by both, Fulford’s form seemed to be fading.

Still, as they headed for Hoop 10, it was 6-3. All GC players know things can rapidly change if it gets to 6-4. Essick was faced with an option to jump Black with a straight-on shot for the title win. If he missed, Black would score and get that 6-4 result. Essick calmly stepped up and nailed the jumper for the win and a brief, but well-merited court celebration as only the second U.S. player to claim a WCF World Championship.