The greatest Golf Croquet game ever played
Cairo, 2013. Reg Bamford, one hoop from defeat in the world final, wins five hoops in a row under lights. Watch the game, and play the comeback.
Play the comeback — 6–2 down, five hoops from defeat. Click and hold to aim, release to strike.
Watch it
airo, April 2013. It was the final of the Golf Croquet World Championship, the fifth and deciding game, under floodlights. Ahmed Nasr of Egypt, playing at home, led Reg Bamford of South Africa by six hoops to two. Nasr needed just one more hoop to be world champion.
A game of golf croquet has 13 hoops, and the first player to win seven wins the game. At 6–2, Nasr had five chances to win one hoop. Bamford had to win all five that were left.
He did. Bamford took hoop nine, then ten, then eleven. He drew level at six all. Then, about seven yards out under the lights, he ran the thirteenth hoop to win the game 7–6 and the championship.
The match was played on 28 April 2013, the best of five games, according to CroquetScores. Bamford won the first game 7–5. Nasr hit back 7–3. Bamford edged the third 7–6, and Nasr squared it with a 7–4. So it came down to one game, and that game came down to one hoop.
This was the tenth Golf Croquet World Championship, held in Cairo from 21 to 28 April, as the World Croquet Federation records. Bamford is no ordinary champion. According to Wikipedia, he is the only player to have won world titles in both golf croquet and association croquet. The WCF Hall of Fame notes that he held both titles at once, from April to August 2013.
Was it the best game of golf croquet ever played? I think it has a strong case.
You can judge for yourself. All five games are on croquetvideos, our own ad-free video library: Game 1, Game 2, Game 3, Game 4 and Game 5. The decider is at the top of this page.
