Welcome to the First Ever Golf Croquet Variations Tournament!

We have 16 accomplished players in our $11,500 purse tournament this year from all over America as well as visitors from England and Spain. We will be playing a Best of Five Knockout with a consolation doubles event with four teams made up from those who are eliminated in the first round of the Main Event. Your tournament officials are Howard Sosin, Matthew Essick, and Ben Rothman. The tournament officials may have to shorten matches to Best of Three, or add time limits to games, or implement a shot clock if the play gets well off schedule.

The Singles Ladder will have a different order of variations each round with traditional Golf Croquet reserved for the last game. Please refer to our book (pdf) provided for rules and strategies for these new games. We are scheduled to start the first round at 1:30pm Monday. Round 2 will begin Tuesday morning followed by the semi-finals (of the Main Event and the Doubles consolation) Tuesday afternoon. Both Finals will be Wednesday morning.

The Prize Money will be:
Champion $4,000 Finalist $2,000 Third Places $1,000 Fifth Places $500
Doubles Champions $500 Doubles Finalists $250

Play will be recorded for use on Howard’s YouTube page as this is the first time many of these games will be played in a tournament setting.

Have Fun and Play Well!

GC VARIATIONS TOURNAMENT – 16 Invitees – (January 9 – January 11, 2023) at the NCC

INTRODUCTION

This is our first GC Variations Tournament. It will highlight the four GC-based games that Howard Sosin and Ben Rothman invented: 2-Shot (2S) , Dueling Duos (DD), 3-Shot (3S), and AC-GC (AC) as presented in their book Variations on Golf Croquet. This is a single-elimination tournament (involving both singles and doubles play). Each match will be the best 3 out of 5 different single games – where the five possible games will involve the four new games along with Traditional GC – where GC is used when a final 5th game is needed.

SCHEDULE AND FORMAT

The tournament will be played over 2.5 days: Monday afternoon (January 9), Tuesday Morning and Afternoon (January 10), and Wednesday morning (January 11). There will be optional practice sessions, on Saturday and Sunday Afternoon (January 7 and 8) with free instruction on all of the new games. A dinner for participants will be held at the NCC on Sunday evening. Lunch will be available on Tuesday.

All 16 Participants will start by playing singles in a seeded, single-elimination tournament. The eight players eliminated in the Round of 16 will be organized into 4 teams and play a single elimination doubles tournament:

SINGLES

Round of 16: 2S, DD, 3S, AC, GC Monday Afternoon 8 matches (8 courts)
Round of 8: DD, 3S, AC, 2S, GC Tuesday Morning 4 Matches (4 courts 5-8)
Round of 4: 3S, AC, 2S, DD, GC Tuesday Afternoon 2 Matches (2 courts 5 and 6)
Round of 2: AC, 2S, DD, 3S, GC Wednesday Morning 1 Match (1 court 6)

DOUBLES

Round of 4: 3S, AC, 2S, DD, GC Tuesday Afternoon 2 Matches (2 courts 7 and 8)
Round of 2: AC, 2S, DD, 3S, GC Wednesday Morning 1 Matches (1 court 5)

PRIZE MONEY

There will be $11,500 of prize money allocated as follows:

                                      SINGLES                                                                                           DOUBLES

1st $4000 3rd and 4th $1000 1st team $500 each member
2nd $2000 5th - 8th $500 2nd team $250 each member