CROQUET PEOPLE: Danny Honeycutt of Lexington, North Carolina, USA CROQUET PEOPLE: Danny Honeycutt of Lexington, North Carolina, USA 
12 June 2005
Lexington, North Carolina, USA 
by Dan Galindo in the Winson-Salem Journal
| Related Information | |
History: The United States Croquet Association says that the origins of the sport trace to mid-19th century Britain. The game soon spread to other English-speaking countries. American manufacturers scaled down the size and weight of equipment so it could be played on rough turf. USCA-sanctioned competitions of six-wicket croquet require heavier equipment and good lawns. Most backyard sets are played on a nine-wicket course. Growth: According to the USCA Web site, there are nearly 300 clubs and 3,000 members in the United States. The association sanctions hundreds of local, regional, national and international tournaments each year. Web Site: More information about the rules of the game and membership is on the USCA web site. |
Davidson County player Ranked 5th in North America
A croquet mallet - the real thing, not the quaint club used for the backyard version - looks like a cross between a golf club and a pool cue, with a long wooden block on the top.
In Danny Huneycutt's hands, it's the means to a national championship and a possible invitation to international competition. Huneycutt, 46, won the singles title at the United States Croquet Association's National Championships last week [at the Puget Sound Croquet Club] in Kirkland, Wash.
Out of a field of 20 players, including five past champions, sixth-seeded Huneycutt prevailed. He's now ranked the fifth-best player in North America, just four years after he started playing the game.
The form of croquet that Huneycutt plays, called Association Rules croquet, is the form that's played around the world.
The backyard version of croquet uses lightweight, inexpensive equipment, such as wooden balls and thin-wire wickets, but the real game is much different, Huneycutt said from his home in the Arcadia Community in Davidson County.
The game is played on a court that's 105 feet long and 84 feet wide, with six thick wickets. That requires each shot to be carefully planned, because the larger, heavier plastic balls barely fit through the wickets.
"It's an oddity relative your mainstream sports... It's one of those sports you have to search for to find it," he said.
His search started about 25 years ago. Back then, he played backyard croquet with his in-laws on Sundays.
One day they read a newspaper article about Archie Burchfield, a Kentucky tobacco farmer who took up competitive croquet in the 1980s and quickly won a national title.
Huneycutt and his brothers-in-law decided to modify their version of croquet to add strategy and challenge to the game. They made new wickets out of cold-rolled steel, wickets Huneycutt still has at his house.
Over the years, they played fewer and fewer games, and eventually stopped. Huneycutt worked at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in maintenance, then went back to school and later returned to Reynolds. He raised two children and helped coach several sports at North Davidson High School.
Four years ago, Mike Lambros, the athletics director at the school, asked him to help teach croquet to students, and introduced him to Jon Essick, whose family has a croquet court in Welcome.
Huneycutt said he didn't really know the official rules of the game, but he and Essick looked them up.
They needed equipment too, which led them to Mack Penwell, who runs croquet and lawn bowling programs at Pinehurst Resort and Country Club.
Penwell said he would help them out, as long as they would come to Pinehurst and learn the game.
They agreed.
"At that point, I got hooked on it," Huneycutt said. "It's kind of like a golfer gets golf fever, I got croquet fever."
In his second tournament, he placed fifth. In 2002, he was the United States Croquet Association's rookie of the year.
He and Essick formed the Meadows Mallet croquet club in Welcome, and kept learning the game from Penwell.
He soon discovered that as much as he needed to work on different shots, such as jumping one ball over another one, he also needed to learn the strategy of the game to outwit opponents.
Honeycutt said that when he first started playing, his problem was that more experienced players "knew they knew more than me."
Now Huneycutt hopes to make the national team that plays against teams from Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Six players for the national team are selected in January by the United States Croquet Association.
The state tournament for club teams is in August, and Meadows Mallet has won for the past two years.
He plays between two and four times a week at the Arbor Acres retirement home in Winston-Salem, where he volunteers to help their croquet program.
For Honeycutt, croquet is a sport that he can keep playing as he gets older. Outsmarting an opponent, no matter what the sport, never gets old.
"I never played anything that I wasn't trying to win," he said.