Garden Games Croquet Sets have been designed with the player in mind we have a range of balls to meet most players needs.

The smallest Croquet set we have is the Lawn Croquet set. The Lawn Set comes with a 6.5oz painted wooden ball. The balls are 7.5cm in diameter and come in first colours (red, Yellow, Black and Blue) in the set but, second colours (Brown, Green, White and Pink) are available to purchase.

The balls are primarily designed to be use by children and their lightweight nature and smaller than standard size reflect this.

Next we have the Cottage and Longworth Croquet Sets. The set was designed with Adult players to use in their gardens and so has smaller 12oz wooden painted first colour balls that are 9.2cm in Diameter. Again second colour sets are available to purchase.

Wooden balls are nice to play with but, are very much designed to be use on a recreational basis and are not competition standard. Variations in the wood make the balls impossible to grade at tournament level. Wooden balls are lovely to use in the garden and a nice set will last you for a long time, however over time you may find that the paint flakes off and the balls can look worn.

Garden Games Limited offer replacements for all out Croquet Sets and have recently launched a range of 12oz composite balls. These balls offer the durability of surface and the ball will play in a more controlled manner, however the smaller weight means that it can be used to replace balls in sets that are fragile or indeed not full size adult sets where the mallet may suffer should a full 16oz ball be used.

Wooden balls are not used in the Townsend or Hurlingham Croquet sets, where a composite plastic 16oz ball is used. These balls are completion size and weight however they have not been tested by the Equipment Committee of the Croquet Association.

Composite balls offer a fantastic controlled level of play and a hard wearing and beautiful look that will last for many generations. If you are looking at playing in a championship level or with a club the balls used have to pass a strict certification against regulations which govern the size weight and bounce of the balls used in tournaments.

They are as follows - (this information should be used for reference only)

The Championship Ball

(Specification for balls is given in Imperial measurements; however I have also shown metric for reference only.)

The ball diameter must be greater 3 19/32 and must not exceed 3 21/32 inches (91.3mm up to 92.9mm in metric -approx).

The variation in ball diameter size can be no more than 1/32 inch (0.8mm) and variation in the diameter of the balls in a complete set must not differ by more than 3/64 inch (1.2mm).

The ball when dropped from a height of 60inchs (152cm) onto a steel plate,1 inch thick (25mm) and set in concrete, must rebound to a height of no less that 31 inches (787mm) and not more than 37 inches.

The rebound height will be taken by taking an average of eighteen drops.

Each ball dropped will be dropped three times onto each of the poles and the four node areas that appear in the milling pattern on the ball.

The rebound height on a set to be used together during play must not differ by more than 2 inches (51mm).

All championship balls are milled in the same pattern, this must consist of two orthogonal sets of grooves and the width of the grooves must be less that the width of the sections left untouched. Each ball must weigh 16 ¼ oz or 460.7 grammes.