She has copped a fair share of ribbing from the cheap seats.
"I get teased because I play an old person's game but I'm not playing an old person's game," she says with a laugh.
For Reeves, who's entering in her fifth nationals and will face off in the singles and doubles fields, there's the added joy of competing alongside and against her son who is now 21.
Liam Reeves hasn't played much lately because of university although the former New Zealand Under-21 squad member is graduating early next year.
The affable Englishwoman says Liam didn't baulk at the thought of having his mother swooning around on his patch because he was too immersed in whatever the other teenagers were into during and between play.
"We played doubles together but when you're playing golf croquet it just doesn't matter."
If anything, she relishes engaging in a sport where disparities in physicality and age don't become deterrents, considering many other codes where parents have passed their use-by dates when the children hit their prime.
The mother of four, whose husband Andy Reeves is a mathematics teacher at Havelock North High, moved from Kent with the family to the Bay in 2003 for a change in lifestyle.
So what about the senior Mr Reeves' attitude towards a code where the "party just keeps moving on"?
"My husband doesn't play croquet and has no intentions of playing it because he doesn't think he's old enough," she says with a chuckle, revealing that sort of mindset needed addressing from home.
She played hockey, squash and badminton in her heyday, confirming her partiality to racquet-ball type of sports.
In the transition to golf croquet, Reeves found benefits in the hand-eye co-ordination concept, as one would find with hockey, but the contemporary modified game of mallets required one to adopt a more methodical mind set.
"It's beyond just having the skills to want to hit the ball when you want to hit it," she says, alluding to having such attributes as anticipating rivals' moves and counter plans to plot their demise in chess-like fashion although she has never played the board game.
When Reeves started in golf croquet, she didn't foresee herself entering the cauldron of elite competitions but the incremental gains from dedication during training saw her confidence rise.
The zero handicapper, akin to a scratchy in amateur golf, won the says the best players are on a minus six handicap in New Zealand.
"All I wanted to do when I started playing golf croquet was to say I'm a scratch player. If minus six is the best you can do then I want to be one but it'll never happen," she says, giving in to an innate desire.
Why the resignation?
Reeves reveals the best female Kiwi player has been a minus four.
"If I become a minus four I'll be very happy."
That, she believes, will come a diet of more strategic practice and competitions. She was managing four times a week in the year but during holidays she has upped it to three hours a day leading to the nationals.
She doesn't consider association croquet the more serious version but just another format for which she doesn't have enough hours in the day to play.
Reeves, who won her maiden Heretaunga club champs last month, doesn't model her game on hard-hitting Egyptian players but sacrifices force for accuracy although she will rise to occasion when there's a need to traverse the entire lawn.
Last year she was crowned single and doubles champion at the four-and-above handicap nationals but gave the open nationals a miss in Nelson this year due to travel expenses.
"I knew I was going to win it," says Reeves, banking on her experience and form to realign her focus.
Her first open nationals was as a doubles player in Mt Maunganui before she competed in Auckland, Waikanae and the Bay.
She doesn't think she'll win the open here because of the big step up but has set goals of making the final 16 and whatever transpires after that will be a bonus.
"It's open so you're really playing against some top international standard players."
Croquet HB publicity officer Colleen Stephens says play here will start at 8.30am each day and is open to spectators and visitors.
Twenty doubles and 42 singles entries have been confirmed in fields that lured two from Australia.
Defending open champion Edmund Fordyce, a schoolboy who won the NZ U21 crown in Christchurch on December 16, will spearhead 11 Croquet NZ Junior squad members here.
"Home-ground advantage is all right for the first couple of games but after that the really good people will have it worked out," Reeves says with a laugh, impressing Bay lawns are uniform and slick, unlike other centres where they can be undulating.
