Jack Osborn - Promoting The Sport To The Affluent Class

Promoting The Sport To The Affluent Class

Osborn was a devotee of New York cafe society, and the contacts he made in social circles were essential to croquet's growth. He made no secret of his strategy. "Croquet in America," he said, "is a sport for the affluent class." The strategy worked. Croquet could grow only where there were lawns, and lawns would be built only by those with the financial resources to build them. USCA croquet took root at resorts and country clubs up and down the East Coast. Black tie and sneaker croquet balls became a common feature of the social calendars of the East Coast elite. Croquet was the in thing. The press loved the story and repeated it endlessly - usually on the society or lifestyle pages, almost never in the sports section.

Although the creation of the nonprofit Croquet Foundation of America provided a vital channel of support for croquet, it never produced enough income for croquet's founding spirit. For the better part of two decades, with help from his friends and patrons, Jack Osborn lived a life of near monk-like devotion to his cause, sacrificing income, personal security, and even close relationships to the demands of his fledgling sport.

Osborn surrendered the presidency of the USCA in 1989 in the midst of controversy, the seeds of which were sown by Osborn himself, out of his early success. With the growth of the sport and the increasing involvement of others in the operation and management of the USCA and the CFA, he was unable to exercise the degree of personal control he had had in earlier days. The notions of other enthusiasts conflicted with his own vision for the sport in many ways. Many in the croquet establishment began to speak of Osborn's continued leadership as more of a problem than a benefit.

The leadership issue reached a boiling point in 1988 with the publication in Osborn's Croquet Gazette of a pointed attack on the killer players he felt were a threat to the future of croquet especially in the western states, which had partially defected to the rival American Croquet Association.