"Speak softly and carry a big stick." That was Teddy Roosevelt's motto in life, but he could just as well have been talking about the serious croquet player - the kind who wears white, and expertly whacks a wooden ball through a tall but very skinny wooden wicket on a perfectly manicured green.

At the Croquet Club of Vermont in Woodstock, the game has become an obsession for a couple of players who really know what they're doing. For Vermont Edition's weekly lesson in Summer School, they're going to teach us exactly how to strike that ball with perfect precision.