"It's not telecast on ESPN at home although years ago one was," says the resident of Petaluma, California, who is a professor of environmental studies at Sonoma State University.
However, he accepts it is a difficult sport to follow.
"It's kind of like watching chess on TV. Golf croquet is more suited to TV and it has a bigger audience," he says of the more flamboyant, contemporary cousin of the association version which has "a lot more nuance to it in strategy".
"Like tennis you go back and front when you try to make a point."
Peterson reveals the roots of croquet go back to Ireland in the 1850s as the first documented reference although England adopted it.
What surprised him a few years ago was finding an oil painting at a friend's house that depicted indigenous American Indians playing the game at a reservation ground.
The artist, he says, read a journal that inspired his concept of what it must have looked like.
That spurred Peterson to track down library books with literature on 1920s lawn games which showed men and women playing the game at the turn of the 20th century.
He stumbled on to the game of mallet and hoops in Rotorua after he and wife Judie made a whirlwind holiday trip from North Queensland where he was working in 1986-87.
"We had parked our car and were having our dinner in the car when we people started playing at the croquet club."
That prompted him to jump out of the car to make a few enquiries before buying a mallet.
"I saw a mallet and bought it. I knew I was going back home [to the US] to look after my father who was battling Alzheimer's disease," he says, resigned then to giving up his job to look after his father, Milton E Peterson, who died in 1995.
Ironically the former volleyballer found not only did they have a croquet club in his neighbourhood but also a world championship at nearby Santa Rosa, not far from Windsor where he was looking after his ill father.
He fondly recalls receiving copy of USA Today newspaper Monday sports section carrying a lead story on croquet, after his employers in Boston asked him if he wanted anything. He liked reading the football and other key US results.
Ben Rothman is the US top seed in the MacRobertson series.
The 30-year-old Palm Springs (Mission Hills) schoolteacher breaks the mould of older players and has brought a contingent of family members and fans on the trip.
The US are weak, Peterson reckons, because their geographic expanse doesn't allow top players playing against each other more than four times a year when juxtaposed with New Zealand.
"Take in the motel and travel and it can cost up to $1000.
"We also don't have any elder statesman to teach the game to our young guys," he says, claiming the current crop don't know to play "percentages" to eke out wins.
However, the Americans aren't exactly pushovers. They have beaten England twice in the past four years in their Solomon Trophy test clash. The tourney is named after England legend John Solomon.
While Rothman competes in England, Peterson says more players needed to play abroad to hone their skills.
"I played in Dannevirke, Hastings, Wellington and Manurewa [south Auckland] so that's why I was a good player."
For the record, he gave Te Mata stalwart Don Reyland a bumper sticker in 1994 that inspired the sign board at the entrance to the club.
