Family's Game Is No Joke
Silver Spring Father and Sons Revel in Competitive Tiddlywinks
Saturday, January 21, 2006; Page B01
Dave "The Dragon" Lockwood has heard it all before.
He has seen the smirks; he has heard the jokes. But as a former world champion, he has also basked in the glory of a sport that some describe as just the right mix of skill and intellect.
  Dave Lockwood, right, watches as Jordan Fein tries to "pot" a shot. Lockwood started playing the game in the 1970s while at MIT. (Photos By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post) |
And now he is passing that on to his children.
NASCAR has the Earnhardts; baseball, the Ripkens; and football, the Mannings. Now competitive tiddlywinks has . . . the Lockwoods.
From his Silver Spring home -- where tiddlywinks practice is wedged among homework assignments, soccer games and wrestling matches -- Lockwood is grooming his own dynasty.
Even as he hones his skills -- hoping to recapture the No. 1 ranking he last held in 2001 -- Lockwood is busy schooling his children in the ways of the squidger. All five of his children play tiddlywinks, and of them, Max, the middle child, appears to have the most potential to join his father in the top echelons of the wink world.
At 12, Max was one of the youngest players ever to hold a world title. At 16, he is currently ranked 52nd in the world in tiddlywinks. But his brothers, Jon, 13, and Ben, 10, also have potential, their father said.
"Strategically, Max probably has the most experience," Lockwood said. "But Jon and Ben have been coming along fast."
In fact, Jon and his father are slated to compete in April in England at both the world pairs championship and the English pairs tournament.
The Lockwood children said it was only natural for them to take up the sport. They grew up watching their dad compete, and last year -- the 50th anniversary of the modern game -- Lockwood took the entire family to England for the festivities.
"Tiddlywinks doesn't sound very serious,'' said Max, who participates in other sports, such as wrestling, and who started a tiddlywinks club at his school. "But you start playing, and you realize how different and challenging it is to do each shot. There's so much strategy."
Added Lockwood, the father: "Sometimes it's hard to stand up and take the ridicule that comes when you say that you take tiddlywinks seriously. But it does have a physical element.''
