Croquet is a lawn game where players hit balls through hoops. A wooden mallet is used to hit these balls. You can play this game on any flat surface, be it in your backyard or a professional court. The game’s primary objective is to maneuver your balls across the lawn and through the strategically placed nine hoops. The balls are driven through the hoops in the correct sequence and direction. You finish the game by hitting these balls against the center peg. The first team to finish the course with both balls is declared the winner.

The exact inception of croquet remains unclear. Some sources claim it originated from the French game Pall Mall, while other theories assert that Pall Mall was more golf than croquet. Upper-class individuals mostly played initial croquet games, but by 1870, its popularity had spread all over England and its colonies. The surge in popularity saw croquet introduced in countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

However, the emergence of lawn tennis slowed down croquet’s momentum around the start of the 20th century, and it wasn’t until decades later that the game of croquet was revived. Come 1950, and Americans had learned how to play croquet. It was played across the US mainly as a recreational sport. From then to the present, the game has been on an upward trajectory. In Canada and the US, the recreational 9-wicket croquet is prominent, while garden croquet is more popular in the UK.