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. 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, Md., home, Lockwood is grooming his own dynasty.

Even as he hones his skills, 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.

Advertisement

At 12, Max was one of the youngest players ever to hold a world title. At 16, he is ranked 52nd in the world in tiddlywinks. But his brothers, Jon, 13, and Ben, 10, also have potential, their father said.

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.

"Tiddlywinks doesn’t sound very serious,’’ said Max, who participates in other sports 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.’’

The elder Lockwood was a freshman at MIT when he was handed a list of activities he could participate in. On the list: tiddlywinks.

"So I checked it off, along with baseball and skydiving,’’ Lockwood said. "I didn’t think they were serious.’’

But a few weeks later, the captain of the tiddlywinks team called. And kept calling. Lockwood went to a meeting and discovered that he had a knack for the squidger, the tool used to launch the winks.

Lockwood’s skill would eventually earn him a No. 1 ranking from the English Tiddlywinks Association. He is hoping to return to the top of the sport this year.

Lockwood teamed with son Jon for the North American Tiddlywinks Association pairs tournament recently in the basement of a Maryland home.

Around the room, more than a dozen winkers warmed up. They set up the tables and smoothed out the felt pads. Lighting was adjusted. There was laughter and a bit of backslapping. Phrases such as: "It’s a good potting squidger,’’ "If you’re on this, you boondock’’ and "The blue’s over the yellow — I could consider double- booning’’ filled the air. When tournament play began, the atmosphere grew tense.

As he and Jon played, Lockwood dispensed Jedi-like advice:: "Just focus on the shot. Don’t worry about the situation.’’

The father-son combination proved to be a winning one. The two Lockwoods won first place, and Dave Lockwood moved up one notch to eighth in the world.

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the North American Tiddlywinks Association this year, Lockwood is hoping to persuade Prince Philip, reportedly a tiddlywinks aficionado, to suggest that tiddlywinks be chosen as a demonstration sport during the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London.

If the Games can have synchronized swimming, he said, why can’t there be winks?

Squidgers and squopping

But real tiddlywinks, which involves two or four people, is played on a 6-by-3-foot felt mat. Winks come in four colors — blue, green, red and yellow — and two sizes: two large winks and four small ones in each color.

And there’s a pot, generally a red cup, in the middle. The winks are shot using a small disk known as a squidger.

Players earn points ("tiddlies’’) for the number of winks they land in the cup but can also block opponents from reaching the pot by "squopping’’ or covering their winks.

Want more? The Web is full of information on getting started on tiddlywinks. Try these sites as a starting point: