The first 2-Ball Golf Course in the world- Brief history

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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE FIRST 2-BALL GOLF COURSE IN THE WORLD AT

PRINCES PARK, EASTBOURNE?

Do you remember at the beginning of 2006, a new beginning for the public mini golf course, opposite Fort Fun, at Princes Park, Eastbourne?

Have you ever wondered what happened, when within months of opening it had closed and been returned to the council? This is the story of what happened.

I need to begin by explaining that 2-Ball Golf was an idea I’d had in 1975. Since my early retirement in 2002, and moving to Mojácar in Spain, I needed to find another way of making a living and I decided to develop my idea. To my mind, mini golf is a boring game, especially for adults, and 2-Ball Golf was invented to make the concept more interesting.

The early days were spent on designing a retail version of the game and the first prototypes were made in Taiwan. They were so good I thought I was on a winner, but because you cannot patent a game, I knew I had to instigate as many opportunities as possible, before others jumped on the bandwagon. I drove to Richard Branson's home and left him a game, hoping he'd want to be an investor. The other three ideas I came up with were a full sized public course, the mobile ‘Party’ game for functions and events and the home conversion plan for installing the game into people’s gardens or unused tennis courts. A new van was purchased and the mobile game comprising of four very expensive holes were designed and built. A garden conversion design was commissioned complete with flower beds and water features. All that remained to do was find a public course before exploding the new game on the world stage.

I had spotted the course at Princes Park whilst visiting Fort Fun and Adventure Island sites in Eastbourne as part of my research into the Mini Golf industry.

By the end of 2005, after negotiating with the Borough Council, we had in place the four products we needed to begin our company.

We now had to bring the concept to the world’s attention and the means to do this would be the London Golf Show.

The Golf Show was at the end of April which left us barely two weeks to get ready to open in Eastbourne. We had, by now, mid March, moved into the Toby Carvery, Eastbourne, our home for the next six weeks.

At Princes Park, the kiosk was dirty and drab and the pavilion which hadn’t been used for at least 17 years had been vandalised. It’s charm lay in the pretty art deco façade. There was no water and electricity. Not authorised electricity anyway. The council had abandoned it with a live wire exposed and no fuse box. We would clear, clean and decorate the kiosk ourselves. Renovating the pavilion began on the 5^th April. A water supply was to be established to the pavilion and also rewired ready for proper connection. However we could not find the source of the existing live wire which we had by now made safe. Also it would be fitted it out with shelving and equipment such as fridge, hot water boiler, till etc.. Stock was ordered and the total expenditure getting to this stage was about £10,000. We were exhausted but worse was to come with the setting up for the Golf Show. If you have never set up an exhibition, believe me, getting it all organised is so demanding.

We opened Eastbourne in time for Easter and the weekend was quite busy but the majority of visitors were not about to try something new and disappointingly, they wanted to continue to play putt putt. At this time we made a video explaining the rules of the game. The idea was that it would be ready to use on the stand at the Golf Show. The weather at the beginning of April was as unpredictable and the weekdays were quiet. It didn’t matter; we had our course. There was interest in our retail boxed game from a company in America. It seemed to be coming together and the Golf Show would cement the various aspects of the business together. Taking delivery of 10,000 full colour leaflets, believing that up to 300,000 visitors would be attending we went up to the Excel centre, London.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

I was happy with the small stand. It showed off the products and we could do demonstrations on our green. The video finally arrived on the first public day. I had 400 boxed sets and 900 card sets of the retail game and I doubted if we had enough of either to meet the demand from intrigued and spend happy visitors.

How wrong I was. We sold one boxed set and we gave away more card sets than we sold, which in any case, didn’t get into double figures. Don’t get me wrong; we entertained hundreds of people on our demonstration green, many of whom said what a good game it was. The problem was they wouldn’t buy the game. One man said that the game was good. He enjoyed it but why buy the game when he could go home and play it for nothing now that he knew the rules. We always knew this was a major flaw in the commercial plan but it still hurts to hear it on the first day of the promotion.

Our PR company arranged a public demonstration on the show green, late in the afternoon on the first day. Sadly, there were no TV companies and no press men attending and although Henry Alliss, son of the famous TV commentator helped with the demo, it made no impact whatsoever.

Four days of no sales. We were shattered afterwards but had to get back to Eastbourne and prepare for the May Day bank holiday weekend. Just 30,000 people attended the show. How had I got it so wrong that I was a factor of ten out?

EASTBOURNE

That first May weekend was worryingly quiet and we were beginning to have problems with young bike riders. They would ride over the course including the greens and often in front of their parents. I had to constantly patrol the course and it was becoming apparent that I was becoming part of the game; part of the problem. The kids, and some were very young, were playing with a game with ME. Other problems included having flags removed and thrown into the boating lake.

The art deco pavilion was ready for opening by 27^th May. (We had water but electricity was run from the kiosk). The very next day we turned up to discover that we had had an attempted break in causing much damage to the new windows. It was heartbreaking. We called the police and they turned up the following day. The windows could not be left as they were and it was decided to brick them up. The very next day, the same thing happened except that the perpetrators had tried to dismantle the newly bricked up windows. The doors had been damaged and there was glass everywhere.

That evening as I watched from the kiosk, a man approached the pavilion and urinated in a doorway.

The end came soon afterwards. On the following Wednesday, the 31^st May, a series of incidents left us wondering if it was worth it. Firstly, we had the lady and child with their own golf clubs and ball, playing on the course. I told her that it was a pay and play course and if she wanted to play she would have to pay. She looked at me and said, “You are joking. This is a council site, belonging to the ratepayers and I’m not paying”. We had many such incidents and on one occasion we had the park rangers come to evict three youths who refused both to pay and to leave. They told the rangers that they had never paid in previous years. They even had the cheek to ask for a scorecard!

The second incident was the mother walking her children across the course, en route for the fair. Two boys each picked up an iron flag from two of the greens and began fighting with them. Sue shouted and one child dropped his flag on the green and ran, with the other chasing him flag aloft. I intercepted him and retrieved the flag. The woman said not a thing.

The final straw was the cricketers. If it wasn’t so funny you could weep. The dad and two sons in whites set up their wickets on the course and commenced a game of cricket, using part of a green as the pitch.

Sue was coming towards me from the pavilion as I returned from ‘Lords’. We looked at each other and knew what we had to do. Our business was inoperable. The lack of security compromised our business and meant that the course could never be maintained to a standard we wanted. We packed up and tendered our resignation to the Seafront Department that very afternoon. We couldn’t blame them for what happened but we felt in some way let down by the council for giving us no protection. It wasn’t only us. The bowls club next door had suffered break ins and damage done to the rinks. It was a constant battle. The difference was that they had many members; we were just two.

Eastbourne is a lovely town and we enjoyed our months there. Princes Park is a wonderful facility for the town and the Friends of the Park do such good work, voluntarily, to keep it beautiful. What a shame that a few thoughtless and downright stupid people spoil it for the majority.

BACK TO SPAIN

As if leaving Eastbourne and our dream of a course wasn’t bad enough, more bad news was to follow from America. The application for protection of my trade mark and name was turned down. I had no more money for an appeal.

Also, the commercial trials for the boxed game set, which took place in Minnesota, were a failure. Also, I received a nice letter from Richard Branson, thanking me for my gift.

There was nothing left to do but return to Mojácar, our home in Spain.

Our enterprise in bringing a new and innovative product to the market place had failed to win public approval.

Today, I still believe that the idea of 2-Ball Golf is good. Mini Golf or Crazy golf is boring and there is room for a new game of skill and strategy. However, I like to think I’m enterprising and as I had no more money, I turned to a new venture, writing novels. I wrote my first novel, ‘APSARAS’, in 2007 at the age of sixty.

It has been published by Eloquent Books of New York and is available from leading online book stores.

Kevill Davies

To see how 2-Ball Golf is played click on the you tube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKUGoo2lbjo

UFOs and other science news.

Some science news

Close encounters... UFOs made 600 visits to the UK in a single year, according to MoD 'X-Files'.

So says the Daily Mail on 18th August 2009.This comes as no surprise to me; nor does the news that scientists working for NASA have found an amino acid in the tail of a comet.

The Daily Telegraph reported on 18th August that the amino acid glycine was found in samples from comet Wild 2 brought back to Earth by the American Stardust probe.

The substance is one of 20 amino acids which join up in chains to create millions of different proteins, the molecules from which all the cells and structures found in living organisms are made.

The theory of Panspermia, put forward by Hoyle and Wickramsinghe years ago argued that life was introduced to the earth by passing heavenly bodies such as comets and that life was widespread throughout the universe. That is not to say intelligent life, but mainly simple life forms such as single cell structures, bacteria and viruses. It was suggested that major plagues were instigated on earth after the planet passed through the tail of comets. Many people scoffed at their proposition when it was first published at the end of the last century, but maybe they will be proved correct, after all. The universe still holds many surprises and the existence of ufos and the creatures that drive them is but one. Elsewhere in this blog, you can read my theory of negative dimensions that use the quantity 'i' or the square root of minus one. Ufos are machines that operate in such a 'negative' world. Sometimes, they are seen when their dimensions are changed or flipped at the 'veil of reality'.
For those who scoff, let me say that there is to much of it to be ignored. Sightings by witnesses of impeccable experience and standing now join thousands of others going back twelve thousand years, at least.

In another report on the same day, the Telegraph reports that two American mathematicians, Blake Temple and Joel Smoller, mathematicians at the University of California and the University of Michigan, have come up with a view that does away with the need for dark energy in Cosmological theory.
I think not. Dark energy, like dark matter, cannot be seen and again people are sceptical about its existence. Black holes can't be seen but scientists believe they've found evidence for their existence by seeing their gravitational effects on surrounding stars and galaxies. The existence of dark energy will be proved one day to be part of the negative world that makes up one of the two parts of our universe.
From the beginnings of time, people have recognised this duality, splitting them typically into 'Light' and 'Dark'; 'real world' & 'spirit world'; 'Yin' & 'Yang' and Heaven & Hell.

FAQ 1 How did I get my name?

Frequently Asked Question?

Where did my name KEVILL DAVIES come from?

As far as I know I am the only person in the world with a first name, 'KEVILL'.It derives from a family name 'Kevill-Davies' which in turn comes from two families, 'Davies' and 'Kevill' (Keville), the latter being recorded from Norman Conquest times.

My father, James Harold Davies fought in Burma during World War II under a Captain Peter Kevill-Davies. The officer died in particularly heroic circumstances and my father resolved to call his first born son, Kevill, in his honour.

My father spoke very little of his war life, although he served in many theatres including being present at the relief of Belsen-Burgen concentration camp. Although not decorated during the war, my father's services to his regiment was recognised in his being awarded the British Empire Medal in 1956.

Capitalism- The answer or the problem

From Reader.es 19/8/09

LAST issue I looked at the one of the two
pillars of Western life, Democracy and concluded
it wasn't working. The people cannot
be trusted to vote for the well being of
the nation.The lemmings still vote for the
Lemming party despite their manifesto saying
that there is a risk of drowning in the
sea.
I now turn to the other bastion of our way
of life; Capitalism. For many centuries it
has provided the means to push the
Western world forward as a centre of industry,
excellence and innovation that could
never be matched by say, the communist
countries. Nobody can surely dispute that
the Americans with their business enterprise
forged ahead of Russia during the
crucial Cold War years.
Now, however, following the banking fiasco,
do we need to look again at how we
finance our lives or do we simply have to
move with the times and regulate the system
better?
Naturally, all trade, should operate on a
barter system. The invention of money
made the system more efficient and the
creation of banks was the lubricant that
greased the cogs of the machinery. Until
recently the system worked well, with most
conflicts of human interest being balanced
on the scales of supply and demand. In
recent decades, however, there has arisen
a field of endeavour that has shaken the
system so much it was derailed. Bankers
using more sophisticated financial instruments,
motivated by unrestrained greed,
have devised a way to make money for
nothing; almost like a perpetual motion
machine. Even better they haven't had to
use their own money to achieve this. They
don't create anything, they don't manufacture
anything and they don't even provide a
service. All they do is move vast quantities
of other peoples money around and take
huge commissions at every stage.Is it any
wonder that the system started to creak
with Nick Leeson and Bearings Bank and
eventually collapse with Lehman Brothers
and others.
The manipulation of markets by these
hedge funds and investment banks affects
ordinary people in the performance of their
savings and more importantly in their pensions.
How is it that one day a company,
well run and trading successfully, can be
worth so much and yet the very next day a
trader takes fright and the share price
plummets? If your pension has exposure to
these shares it will suffer.The recession will
mean many people losing their homes and
well run businesses because of the markdown
of their asset value. It can't be right.
The Finacial Services Authority (FSA)
said this week that they didn't want to pursue
further regulation of the bonus system
in case it weekened the City's ability to
attract the best people and protect the
country's pre-eminance in the Financial
world. Bollocks! Surely we can curb the
excesses and still operate a world beating
financial industry. The Banks should not be
allowed to run as both a Savings bank,
holding public money and an investment
bank, speculating on the stock exchanges
and commodity markets around the world.
Secondly, the Government should introduce
a new and significantly higher level of
tax on the profits of speculation that will
reduce the ability of the Banks to pay
frankly ridiculous bonuses.
That the FSA has lost its appetite to take
on the big Banks shouldn't surprise us. I
may be a cynic but it seems to me that a lot
of senior politicians leave Parliament and
take up lucrative positions in the financial
sector. As an example we need look no further
than the last Prime Minister, Tony Blair.
It is well know that he has advisory jobs
with JP Morgan and the Zurich group who
pay him £500,000 each, per annum. Nice
work if you can get it. Let's make a prediction,
shall we. What odds that Gordon
Brown will take an equally well paid job in
the industry when he eventually retires
from ruining the United Kingdom.

By Kevill Davies, who is the author of
'Apsaras' availabe from all on line
booksellers.

Underage Voting

THE READER.ES
Underage Voting

MP for Cardiff North, Julie Morgan has
recently introduced a Private Members Bill
into the House of Commons, aiming to
reduce the minimum age for voting from 18
to 16.
I don’t know about you but I’m having to
rethink my attitude to both democracy and
capitalism in the light of what has been
happening recently. Let’s start with democracy.
Gordon Brown insists that the aim of
the coalition invasion of Iraq was to rid the
country of a dictator and install democracy
for all its people.
By this I suppose he means to introduce
a system of democracy where pledges
made in a manifesto are not binding (like a
referendum on the Lisbon Treaty); where,
when asked questions on Government policy,
its is not necessary to give a straight
answer, or even an answer at all (PMQs);
where when a majority of the people favour
the death penalty for some offences such
as proven rape and murder of young children,
the Government resolutely declines
to listen.
At the recent Norwich By-Election,
despite all the recent scandals and evidence
of Labours poor handling of the
economy, (despite their protestations that
the UK is better placed in the recession
than most), 20% of the electorate still voted
for them. There are some constituencies in
the UK where it would be true to say that if
the Labour party put up a chimpanzee
against a Conservative, the ape would win,
because the voters, like their fathers and
their fathers before them, wouldn’t elect a
‘Toff’. This is a bit naughty I admit, but it
serves to make my point; that some people
vote without having a clue as to the issues
involved. Should this disqualify their vote?
It’s not only a problem in the UK. Look at
Thailand, a country where they have had
countless coups in the last thirty years
because the electorate stubbornly refuse to
vote in the right party. Most famously, the
last one, involving Thaksin Shinawatr,
came about because the Prime Minister
with a hardcore base in the rural north of
the country was hated by the intelligentsia
and civil service. It was alleged that
Thaksin, bribed the peasants to vote for
him using public money and promises to
improve their lot. When in power, it is
alleged he abandoned the poor and
shamelessly used his position to line his
own pockets as well as those of his family.
He was accused of putting his own interests
above those of the country and is now
exiled.
I’m not saying this is what would happen
in Iraq or Afghanistan, but I’m not hopeful.
The people will vote for that party which
promises to give them the most for nothing,
even if they can’t subsequently deliver; it’s
nothing more than human nature.
This brings me back to the voting age.
Kids as young as sixteen have usually
been nowhere and done nothing; their limited
experiences making no useful contributions
to the debate.
Why, therefore, give them the vote? Why
not make it 14 or 12?
Is this Bill before Parliament, therefore,
nothing more than a Labour ploy to garner
more votes on the basis that these
teenagers are more likely to vote for the
socialists?
I only ask because I want to know!
Have you got the answer?
Let us know at:
letters@thereader.es

Henry Bagshot Online

You can now read the first five chapters of my novel 'Henry Bagshot' Online

Click on the following link http://www.authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx?bookid=10605