Making a Game

In the past few days, I have made a Ladder Golf game out of PVC pipe and golf balls. This game can be made with two 10' pieces of PVC pipe, one 1/2 inch and one 3/4 inch. Of course, the necessary connections are also needed. Below, you will see all the pieces after they were cut, along with the necessary connection pieces.

I spent most of Saturday cutting the PVC pipe into the necessary sizes and then I drilled holes in the golf balls. I bought a bag of reclaimed golf balls from Fred Meyer. It had 36 previously used golf balls in it. Afterwards, the bag makes a very nice carry case for the bolo's that I made for the game. I also painted the golf balls with some paint that I had in the garage. I needed six golf balls in each color to make three bolo's.

Here is the golf balls that I prepared, along with the bag they came in and the clothes line I bought to make the bolo's with . It is 1/2 woven line. Wrapped line does not work as well, because it can become "unwound" while playing the game.

Here is a close up of some of the golf balls with the hole drilled through them.

After cutting all the PVC pipe into smaller, precisely measured pieces, all that remains is to glue and assemble the pieces. Great care must be taken to make sure that the pieces are flat so that it makes a nice looking target. It is also designed to be taken apart for easier transporting. Each of the rungs comes apart and the base is built to part in the middle, below the rungs.

Here are all the bolo's, after taking great care to make sure that they are all reasonably close to the same length. They have to be long enough to wrap around the rungs, but not too long, so they don't wrap around two rungs.

And here is the whole thing, disassembled and ready for transport.

To play this game, all that is needed is two to four people. The distance from the target can be mutually agreed upon, but it must be far enough to make it challenging. Generally, the target will be 5 to 7 paces away. Each person takes turn throwing, under-handed, all three of the their bolo's, one at a time. After each person has thrown their bolo's, a score is taken. The top rung is worth three points, the second rung is worth two points and the bottom rung is worth one point. The person with the highest score goes first on the next toss, working down to the person with the lowest score. The first person to get to 21 EXACTLY wins the game.

During play, bolo's can be knocked off and then those points are lost to who ever had that bolo. If a player happens to go over 21, then the points earned on that toss is subtracted from their score at the beginning of their toss. For example, Player A has 19 points and he needs two to win. His first throw is on the 1 point rung. He now needs another 1 point to win. His next toss wraps around the three rung. He now has 4 points for the turn and he started with 19. He then will "short throw" his last bolo, so as to not get any more points. He now has to subtract the 4 points from the 19 points he had and he now has 15 points for his next turn.

During play, anything can be done to distract the thrower, except touching. It is not allow to touch the thrower in any way.

One interesting "rule" we added for playing this game at Lake Roosevelt this past year, was that if a player landed on 13, he (she) had to go back to 0. This can really make the game exciting.

If anyone wished detailed directions on building this game, please e-mail me and I will send them.