If you visit camp grounds you have probably seen a game called ladder golf. It's got three rungs and contestants throw their bolos trying to wrap them around the lowest rung.

Being a distributor of PVC fittings, I immediately thought of how I might be able to build one of them with PVC pipe and fittings.

I looked these things up on the web and came up this site: http://laddergolf.com/ I was surprised to learn that a tournament set (2 sets of rungs and 12 bolos) retails for about $120!

I'm happy to say my tournament set cost about $35.00 with some fittings from our site, some PVC from a local home store and some golf balls and nylon string lying around my house.

Step 1: Get a Plan Together

As with any project you need to know a little bit of what you want to do before you start. Doing some quick searching around the web I turned up some sites that had some plans for building ladder golf sets.

I used one that I found as a template, but I made some variations because I was using different fittings.

For stability and little strength I decided to build mine out of 3/4" PVC.

Step 2: Parts Needed

If you look at the image, you will see that the assembly is really quite straight forward.

Here is what you need for Each Upright

Fitings
Click this link for a list of fitting on our site

2 - 3/4" Elbows - PVC 15-5 - top support
4 - 3/4" Tees - PVC25-5 - holds middle rungs
2 - 3/4" Slip Tees - PVC10-5 - the bottom pipe slips through these
4 - 3/4" Internal Caps - PVC77-5 - for the end of the bottom pipes to give it a finished look.

PVC Pipe
All pipe is 3/4" Schedule 40 PVC

4 - 1' foot cuts - inbetween top and middle bars.
2 - 20" inch cuts - inbetween base and lower bar.
5 - 2' foot cuts - rungs and base rails.

Basically you need two 10' foot pieces per upright.

Here is what you need for Each Bolo

~24" inches of nylon
2 golf balls

Step 3: Putting It Together

Upright

As far as the upright goes.. just look at the picture. A picture is worth a thousand words here, I don't think I could explain it any better than you just looking at it.

Comment Addition: someone mentioned adding different color electrical tape to each rung to help make remembering the scoring pattern easier

Bolo

I have a drill press that I used to drill out the golf balls.. that was pretty handy. I used a 3/16" drill bit. Just move slowly through the ball, backing the bit off frequently and you'll get a nice hole.

I passed nylon though the first ball.. tied a knot and then tied a second knot on the other side of the ball. Then I measure 16" from the inside of the golf ball and made a mark on the nylon rope. I tied a knot at this mark and then put on the second ball. Once the second ball was on I tied the fourth knot. I trimmed up the knot and ran the ends under a lighter (to melt the nylon & secure the ends).

Comment Addition: someone mentioned using tennis balls instead of golf balls (don't hurt as much if you or some thing (like a car) gets hit. I am also wondering if you could use super bounce balls (though I don't know what would happen when you drilled into them... might be fun to find out)

Step 4: Packing and Playing

Packing

One of the nice things about building this way is that unit completely brakes down. The fittings seemed snug enough not to have to warrant gluing. Everything would pack very nicely into a small duffel bag.

Playing

There's a lot of rules out there, but here's a couple of places to consult for some quick rules:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_ball

http://www.laddergolf.com/ladder-golf-official-rules.php

That's about it.. happy playing!