HALL OF
Fame
ALEXANDER WOLCOTT
Alex Wolcott was the most dramatic, the wittiest, the most Machiavellian of players. Whether playing on his island in Vermont or at Swope's, Paley's, or Harriman's, Wolcott presented quite a spectacle, sometimes in bathing shorts which he wore underneath a mountainous belly or even green silk pajamas which threatened to open like a theater curtain as he wobbled across the lawn. It was Wolcott who fostered the competitive as well as the sportsman like rule or not telling your opponent whether he (or she) was dead on the ball. Wolcott wanted to go further and not have to tell even if asked beforehand but that was shouted down. The most famous croquet game of all in 1928 between Herbert Bayard Swope, Sr. and partner Charlie Schwartz against Meysa McMein and Wolcott for $1,000 apiece tied at 1-1, floundered on this debate among other arguments. It was never finished.
Alexander Wolcott was inducted into the United States Croquet Hall of Fame in 1979.
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