How to Swing a Croquet Mallet: Rules & Etiquette

"Hi this is Ray and today I’m going to show you how to swing a croquet mallet. Now in the game of croquet there are different types of swings that people can do. There is the golf swing, which goes side to side. There’s the side swing, which the goes on the side of the body. But, the most popular swing that most people use is the between the leg swing. And what we’re going to do for that is we’re going to stand about a shoulder’s length apart with our feet. We’re going to bend our knees slightly and lean over. If we put our mallet flat, we’re going to grip it near the top and what we’re going to do is we’re going to square our elbows, we’re going to keep our shoulders straight and we’re going to swing like a pendulum. So we’re going to bring it back and follow through. It’s important when we do a swing that we look straight down at where we’re striking, so that we can make sure that we’re hitting with the proper angle. You already know the angle that we want to go in, so it’s important to see that we hit it where we’re suppose to. Now, one of the things that’s very important for practicing in a swing is to make sure that everything goes in a straight line and that you’re not pushing the ball and you’re not pulling the mallet forward. You want to have a nice even swing and one way to do that is to take your left hand, if you’re right handed, put your other hand away and just practice bringing it back and coming through with your left hand. What this will do is this will get you use to allowing the mallet to do more of the work. Then, when you bring your other hand in, it’s more there to just keep it guided and keep it moving straight and you don’t want to use the mallet to pull the mallet through. So go out there and practice your swings, especially using one hand to get use to the motion, get use to the weight, then with two hands if you get a good swing you’ll be able to do just about anything in this game."