By Eric Sawyer
This event is about to begin! Our lads have arrived in London, practiced, participated in team meetings and are ready for action. Play will begin very early Sunday morning, our time. Team USA will play Sweden first.
To see all of the teams and their members, read about the history and format of the event and to follow the action, go to the official site of the event, located at: http://www.gcwtc2016.org.uk/
To follow the games as they progress, go to Croquet Scores and find: https://croquetscores.com/2016/gc/golf-croquet-world-team-tier-1-at-surbiton. So when you wake up Sunday, check out Croquet Scores first thing and see how our boys are doing.
On our team is Ben Rothman (captain), Danny Huneycutt, David Bent, Sherif Abdelwahab and Rich Lamm. This is the best GC team the US has ever assembled. So good that our team was seeded # 3 out of the world's top GC teams.
Here is some local flavor of the event so far that I have picked up 6,000 miles away.
The first 'brow-rising issue is the interesting rules that will apply to the event. There are a few novel and productive rules. But the interesting part is on controversial shots, such as hard clearances on balls that are close together and hard hoop shots when the ball is very close to a hoop and at an angle. These rules will impact the Egyptian players the most, because they hit so hard. The harder you hit such shots, the harder it is for a ref to determine whether a fault was committed. Unlike in recent US events, the British referees are prohibiting the use of slo-motion video replays of such shots. Instead, the rules set forth technical parameters of hitting angles and ball reactions to mechanically determine whether a fault is committed. The rules rely on the premise that a ref cannot really see if a fault was committed on such shots, so the refs will simply rely on these technical parameters and use trigonometry to arrive at the solution.
The second interesting issue arose at the big player meeting, where the focus was on ball sequences. It was a spirited discussion. One issue here is that the penalties for out-of-sequence shots in the WCF GC rules have been changed in the past year or so. The other issue is that multiple out-of-sequence shots can cause problems in the game and delays in dealing with the aftermath. The players have been asked to focus on out-of-sequence situations and it will be interesting to see if any such shot becomes pivotal during the event.
In the US block is Egypt, Ireland and Sweden. We are seeded # 3 in the entire event. The top two teams for the two blocks advance, so our team is expected to make it out of the block and into the play-offs by virtue of our seed. Of course, they have to play well and win too.
Egypt is the defending champion, the #1 team and expected to win our block. The Irish team is also in our block. They have some veteran players who are used to international events, but I'm not sure if those players have ever played together on the same team. Team chemistry can be a major issue in such events, so I will be interested to see how the Irish gel as a team and get along together in moments of adversity or crisis? They are a very spirited and competitive group of players, so they can never be counted out.
I don't know much about the Swedish players. They have a few players who play well in European matches. My only take on them is that they hit the ball very well. They are technically proficient. But are they up for the constant grind of high-level, pressurized international play such as this? I'm always of the mind that the jury is out on a team like that until they prove themselves.
Here are my predictions. In our block, US and Egypt will advance to the play-offs. In the other block, New Zealand is the dominant top seed expected to win all three matches. The English team did well in 2012, but I think they will have problems against the teams from South Africa and Wales. The SA players have improved and are captained by the great Reg Bamford and also have the reigning Women's World GC Champion. Wales was promoted from Tier 2 so they have a lot to prove. I think England, Wales and SA will all finish tied 1-2.
There will then be an exotic tie-breaking process and I think SA will sneak through, with Reg Bamford getting hot and leading his team to an epic upset. We'll see.
There will then be an exotic tie-breaking process and I think SA will sneak through, with Reg Bamford getting hot and leading his team to an epic upset. We'll see.
I'm not going to predict the play-offs until I know the teams in it. But I really believe in our team and I think they are ready to make some history. Let's cheer our lads on to victory!