The Queen's croquet ground runs from the hedge to the horizon and nothing on it is what it was made to be.

The mallets are flamingos and they have views. The balls are hedgehogs and they uncurl mid-stroke and wander off to look at something. The arches are card soldiers bent double, and they stand where they like, and they walk when they feel like walking.

One thing only is counted here. Every arch a man passes in his life goes against his name, and there is no other honour on the lawn.

Jack came onto the grass on ninety-nine.

He had been coming onto it on ninety-nine for a month. Four times he had lined up the hundredth soldier, and four times the soldier had straightened, saluted, and strolled twenty paces to the left before the hedgehog reached him.

This time the soldier stood.

Jack struck 148.22 and went through clean, and the card did not move an inch, and somewhere behind the hedge a clock that had been stopped all autumn was heard to start.

One hundred career wins. Fifteen seasons of walking this lawn.

The man he took it from was Bolek, who is 2-8 and who leads Jack 6-5 across their lives, which means the arch that had refused nine other opponents was finally handed over by the one player in FantasyWorld Jack has never mastered.

Bolek played 119.64 and was not disgraced by it.

He had, however, left his best hedgehogs asleep in the long grass behind the tee. Twenty-nine and a half points of them, curled up warm, more than any man abandoned anywhere on the ground this week.

The Queen does not behead the loser. She beheads the man who loses worst while holding better.

29.58.

Off with his head. The belt is Bolek's, and Mario surrendered it to him without argument.

At the top of the lawn, Nate did something almost nobody does out here.

He used everything he owned.

Every hedgehog he had brought went through an arch. Not one dozing at the boundary, not one sniffing at the roses, not a single point left on the grass behind him. 157.08, and the basket empty.

Sixty-five times in one thousand and ten attempts has a man come off this ground with nothing left behind.

Daniel, opposite him, was guilty of one-tenth of a point of carelessness. He put up 122.58 and was beaten by 34.5, and there is no appeal available to a man whose only fault was a decimal.

Two soldiers now stand between Nate and the same hundred Jack has just passed. Ninety-eight. He has watched the arches walk away from other men all season, and he will now find out whether they walk away from him.

On the far side of the ground, something grew.

Jonathan Taylor is worth 25.14 on an ordinary afternoon. He got at whatever it is one gets at in that garden and came up 55.6, filling the lawn, knocking the hoops flat, and Mario simply walked behind him collecting arches.

165.3. Highest on the ground. Nine out of nine against every man in the league, which is the plain statement that no opponent existed who could have taken this off him.

Opposite that was Justin, who arrived holding first place in FantasyWorld.

Justin ran. He ran the way you have to run in that country, hard, arms going, and when he stopped he had 86.44 and was three places further back than when he started. Fourth. Beaten by 78.86. Nought for nine against the field, which is the exact opposite of the man across the lawn from him.

The lowest score of the week, from the man who spent this season being told his lineups were the tidiest in the league.

Bill was given two hedgehogs and told to choose.

He has been here before. Last time he chose the safe one and the animal he left in the basket had 23.1 in it, and he has heard about it since.

So he reached in and took RJ Harvey.

Harvey rolled one and a half feet and stopped.

1.8.

Kimani Vidal, left in the basket, was worth 20.8. A nineteen point difference between the hand Bill put in and the hand he did not. His flamingo then tucked its head under its wing and refused to look at the ball at all — 6.8 from Bo Nix, a bird that averages 20.64 and has never before declined to work.

Bill finished on 101.44, beaten by 38.9, and beaten also by eight of the nine other men on the lawn.

The man who beat him was Bryan, and here the ground finally cracked a joke worth hearing.

All season Bryan has played immaculately. Two perfect rounds, the best efficiency in FantasyWorld, nothing wasted, and defeat after defeat after defeat.

This week he left 20.46 lying in the grass.

He won by 38.9.

Eric/Blakey took 137.88 past Gabes, a second win running, and remain ninth on 3-7 — they have now beaten the leading scorer and beaten a six-win team inside a fortnight and it has moved them precisely nowhere. Gabes managed 107.12 and lost to seven of the nine men out there, having beaten Jack by forty a fortnight ago. The lawn is not consistent about anybody.

At dusk the card soldiers straighten up one by one and walk off to wherever they sleep, so that in the morning no arch is where a man left it.

Jack's hundredth stood still for exactly one stroke.

Nate has two of them to catch, and they are already moving.