Master the 3 Essential Croquet Shots. A guide to Lag, Roquet and Hoop Running

Croquet has a lot of shots. Mary McMahon says you only need to worry about three.

"I practice three main shots," she says. "A lag, a roquet, and a hoop. They're your three basic shots, and they're the three you should be practicing."

Practice is how you find your comfort zone.

"What you can do with 80% accuracy is your comfort zone. That's what you do." — Mary McMahon

1. The Lag Most players try to get their ball as close to the hoop as possible. Mary says that's a mistake. The true skill is the "lag"- placing your ball in the most advantageous position, which is often further away from the hoop than lots of players think. "Unfortunately, too many players are obsessed with putting their ball as close as possible to the hoop," she says. "When I played a lot of the better players, they were all going further back. I'm gonna put my ball in close. Well, all I was doing was setting myself up as fodder, because all they did was whack me away and their ball stayed there." A good lag puts you in your hoop-running comfort zone while making you a difficult target for your opponent.

2. The Roquet The roquet is how you control the lawn. You move your opponent's balls, set up breaks, and execute your strategy. Get reliable at hitting another ball from distance and everything else opens up.

3. The Hoop Run Running a hoop is how you score. But players often talk themselves out of it. They see an opponent's ball nearby and choose a defensive clearing shot instead. Mary's advice: be brave. "If you are there, you've practiced running hoops, go have the confidence," she says. "What's the worst that can happen? You miss. But if you start saying to yourself, 'Oh, I better get rid of them,' they're just gonna come back and they might block you, and you may never see that hoop ever again. Go for it."

"You can't do jump shots and all those things until you get the basics," Mary says. "Get the basics right. The rest will flow."

### Want coaching on these shots? A coach can give you drills for each of these three shots and spot the problems you can't see yourself. Book a coaching session below.