Lesser-Known Lawn Sports

Baseball might get all the TV ratings, but for most people the official past time of summer is lawn sports. Every June, nets are removed from attic crawlspaces, heads are screwed back onto croquet mallets and horses are shoed in celebration of outdoor games that require minimal athleticism. In anticipation of three months of laid-back competition, we thought we’d take a look at some lesser-known lawn sports. So what can you do when you’ve lost your bocce set, broken your badminton rackets, and are afraid of losing an eye to lawn darts?

Sholf
Presumably invented by someone so lazy they found both golf and miniature golf too strenuous, Sholf is like shuffleboard played with putters and golf balls on about 13 feet of artificial putting surface.
Pros: Portable, easy set-up
Cons: Despite its youthful branding, Sholf looks like what it is—a combination of two notorious old people sports.

Petanque/Bowls
Petanque and Bowls (aka Lawn Bowling) are two separate games, but they’ll both be instantly recognizable to Bocce players. The equipment is slightly different (hollow metal balls for Petanque, wooden asymmetrical ones for Bowls) as are the rules (in Bowls the balls are rolled, not thrown), but for Franco- and Anglophiles these games provide an easy alternative to their Italian cousin.
Pros: Both sound more sophisticated than “Sholf.”
Cons: Bowls requires a very flat, exquisitely manicured lawn, which is a lot to ask if you’re not playing the game every single day.

Quoits
Horseshoes with a British accent. “Quoitists” throw a metal or rubber ring over a peg and tend to live in Northeastern England.
Pros: A form of Quoits is played during the funeral of Patroclus in Homer’s Iliad. Feel the history!
Cons: If you already own horseshoes, who’s going to want to shell out for a shiny new Quoits ring?

Kubb
Not to be confused with the sappy pop musician of the same name, the Swedish Kubb is known as the Chess of lawn games because of its unusually involved rules and strategy—but don’t expect to see the phrase “as intricate as a well-played game of Kubb” in the near future.
Pros: Presumably, the depth of strategy involved with Kubb means that it will remain fun for more than 45 minutes.
Cons: Presumably, the number of rules involved with Kubb means that it will be hard to convince anyone to play with you.

Mölkky anyone? What obscure summer games are you playing?