I started making them in 1979 and I took over from James Elwood who had a saddle shop and was a taxidermist, he’d been making the ball since 1905 and his father made them before that.” “ There’s a wet and dry procedure so it can’t all be done at once. “It takes about 30 hours to make each ball,” explained Mark. Tut points out that the balls are made on a kitchen table and have been for the past 40 years by Mark Rawlinson. I met him in his back shed and it’s refreshing to know that whatever decisions are made for the game are not contemplated by people in suits out of offices. Tut rattles off a whole range of facts – the fastest game was over in six minutes, while the longest one wasn’t finished until the next day, and in a first, Nathan Askew hailed all three balls last year. That hasn’t happened in Workington because the relative isolation of the town keeps the crowds at bay and, as for the rules, they are vague and tend to follow an ancient feeling of fair play that is long gone elsewhere. There are other similar events scattered over Great Britain but some bring in tourists to watch and others, shockingly, invent new rules to pacify local authorities. It’s a happening rather than a game and all that happens is the ball is made, the Sponsor goes down at 6:30 and sets the game off.” Sure some developers thoughtlessly placed buildings in the way but the players ignore them as they follow rules (or lack of) set long before anyone can remember.Įveryone I asked pointed me in the direction of Ian ‘Tut’ Johnson to explain how the event is organised: “It’s not organised, that’s the thing. In a world where traditions are lost and things are not what they used to be, it’s satisfying to know the Uppies and Downies has not changed from those ancient days. The first reference to Uppies and Downies was in the ‘The Cumberland Packet’ back in 1751 and even then they called it the ancient street game of Workington. That’s the special thing about the Easter event, it’s just always been around. There are plenty of theories why the event came to be part of Workington’s folklore but it’s universally agreed that no one really knows. The Cabot group is also remodeling and expanding the former standalone 36-hole World Woods property on the west coast of Florida, now called Cabot Citrus Farms, a facility that once offered one of the country’s best bargains for exemplary public golf (pricing will be announced when the two refurbished courses open in December).The origin of Uppies and Downies is lost to history now. Michael and Chris Keiser, the operators of Sand Valley and sons of original Bandon developer Mike Keiser, announced the groundbreaking of the first two public courses at Rodeo Dunes near Denver on a site that has the capacity to contain well over 100 holes. Macdonald’s extinct course on Long Island that closed in the 1940s, with a fourth course next year, Tom Doak’s Sedge Valley. Sand Valley will open the Lido Course this summer, a painstaking recreation of C.B. Bandon paved the way for the elevation of obscure regions that never would have been given serious thought as transformative golf destinations: hot, landlocked south-central Florida (Streamsong) the rural woods of central Wisconsin ( Sand Valley) the cold, forlorn north coast of Cape Breton in Canada (Cabot Cape Breton, formerly Cabot Links) and the Ozarks region of Missouri near the Arkansas border (Big Cedar Lodge).
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