John Solomon (22 November 1931 – 20 October 2014) was a

croquet Croquet ( or ; french: croquet) is a sport that involves hitting wooden or plastic balls with a mallet through hoops (often called "wickets" in the United States) embedded in a grass playing court. Its international governing body is the W ...

player from

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Solomon dominated English croquet in the 1950s and 1960s winning the

President's Cup The Presidents Cup is a series of men's golf matches between a team representing the United States and an International Team representing the rest of the world minus Europe. Europe competes against the United States in a similar but considerably ...

nine times (1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1968 and 1971), the

Open Championship The Open Championship, often referred to as The Open or the British Open, is the oldest golf tournament in the world, and one of the most prestigious. Founded in 1860, it was originally held annually at Prestwick Golf Club in Scotland. Later th ...

ten times (1953, 1956, 1959, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967 and 1968) and the Men's Championship ten times (1951, 1953, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1971 and 1972). Solomon also won the

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

Open Championship in 1951 and 1963. Solomon represented England and latterly Great Britain in five MacRobertson Shield tournaments, winning on four occasions. As an administrator Solomon served on the Council of the

Croquet Association The Croquet Association, which was formed as the United All England Croquet Association in 1897, is the national governing body for the sport of croquet in England. Until 1974 the association was responsible for croquet in the whole of the Unit ...

between 1952 and 2004, serving as Chairman (1962 to 1964), Vice President (1976 to 1982) and President (1982 to 2004). In 2006 Solomon was inducted into the

World Croquet Federation The World Croquet Federation (WCF) encourages, promotes and develops the recognised versions of the game of croquet internationally at all levels. National croquet associations around the world are members of the WCF, and the WCF sanctions champio ...

Hall of Fame.

Career statistics

Major tournament performance timeline

Major Championship Finals: 26 (22 titles, 4 runners-up)

Works

* ''Croquet'' (BT Batsford, 1966)

References

External links

The Croquet Records site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Solomon, John 1931 births English croquet players 2014 deaths