Mary McMahon plays out of Southport on the Gold Coast and has been Queensland Ladies Champion for the past five years. She has represented Australia at the Over-50 Worlds. She started in 2017 after a friend talked her down to the local courts. This is a tidied cut of a six-minute interview at her home club, with false starts and production asides removed.
Four and a half minutes. Watch on CroquetVideos
How she started
Mary had been a squash player all her life. A friend told her to come down to the local courts and try this new game. She hesitated.
"But I went, and from day one I was hooked. I thought — where's this game been all my life? It's the perfect game. I'm out in the beautiful sunshine, it's a game of skill, I'm mixing with people, I'm socialising, plus I'm involved in sport and competition." — Mary McMahon
What competition gives her
"Being a sporting person, competition has been a part of my life, and I just feel so fortunate that now I can continue to have that same thrill, the adrenaline of competition. It's a skill I'm developing all the time. I'm setting goals. I just love the whole experience." — Mary McMahon
For Mary, the point of competition isn't winning. It's finding out where you actually are.
"You're able to gauge where you're at in the game. It gives you a marker of whether you're progressing. You may never have thought you might have been able to beat someone — and then at one competition you do. It's a marker. It's a motivator." — Mary McMahon
Her career
Mary has played in capitals around Australia, at state level, and represented Australia at the 2023 Over-50 World Championship in Western Australia, against top players from Egypt, Spain, England and the Netherlands. "A fantastic experience and one I'll never forget."
The practice behind it
This is the part of the interview worth pinning up.
"To be the Queensland Ladies Champion for five years now, I have to say I have put in an incredible amount of time practising. I set myself the goal — what I want to achieve. I then set about working out a training program and work on particular shots. I start with not the shots that I find easy, but the ones that I'm not the best at. They're the ones I'll put an incredible amount of work in." — Mary McMahon
Weak shots first. Most players do it the other way round and wonder why their weak shots stay weak.
"You might see some of the good players out there and think it all just comes naturally. It doesn't. I've put in a lot of time. I practise mainly on my own. I'll play games occasionally during the week, but I practise shots. I need to know — when I'm in a competition, I've practised that. I can do that. I will do that." — Mary McMahon
Why it pays off
"Practising croquet is rewarding because you see results. If you practise and you practise shots, when you go out to play in a competition you'll find that you no longer have to think about the technique and the process of that shot — because you've done all that in your training. It will flow. There's nothing better than that lovely feeling when you get out on the croquet court, you're playing in a competition, and everything seems to flow. That's when you know your practice has paid off." — Mary McMahon
One line to take to the lawn
Practise your weakest shots first, on your own. The competition tells you whether the practice worked. That's the loop Mary has been running for five years.
On the cut
Mary takes three runs at "I enjoy competitive croquet because…" before getting it right on the fourth attempt. The cut drops the first three completely. Stitching her best phrases from all four together would have sounded patched. The fourth take is the one she actually finished, so that's the one that runs. Same approach in the section about why practice is rewarding — three false starts dropped, the working take kept. A few production asides also gone (the part where she's being asked to introduce herself, a couple of long thinking pauses).